Survival Of The Fittest

Let's finish our journey strong, friends. We've seen long runs and short runs, obnoxious godmodding and touchingly open scenes. V2apalooza is coming to a close, and so is my tenure in it. My final kid of the version is Kristey Burrowell, and she has 11 threads, but, as always, we're starting with the profile. Spoilered again for length, but nowhere near as organized as Mariavel.

[+] Godspeed You Kristey Burrowell Lift Your Skinny Fists like Baseball Bats to Heaven

Kristey has a profile wrote:Hobbies and Interests: Plotting, scheming, revenge, reading, studying, piano

Being that half of her interests amount to "exacting revenge on people who have wronged her," I'll take the other three actual interests as the gift from god that they are. Kristey Burrowell is a tall girl, aged fourteen and in the ninth grade. She goes to P.J. Gilroy High School, and overall is somewhat average looking, with blond hair and blue eyes-

Wait a moment. Something's wrong here.

KRISTEY HAS A PROFILE wrote:Long, straight blonde hair, sometimes wears glasses, has blonde eyes, rather pale complexion, shoe size is female 8, light blue eyes

I added the italics myself, to highlight the error here. I don't exactly know which one is canon yet, but the fact that this error managed to make its way through the critique process - or what little critique process there was, back in the day - doesn't really bode well for how the rest of the character will turn out.

KRISTEY wrote:Kristey was always the tall, blonde haired, blue eyed bombshell, but she never fit the personality type associated with it.

I guess the blue eyes are the canon ones. Neglected by her mother, who left another, older child with her birth father - whom she left after seven years - all she really knows about her mother is her pessimistic worldview. The only real influence on Kristey that has left is conservative values and right-wing views, though it has also made Kristey a more callous person. I'm guessing that in the years of V2, these two went hand in hand. Kristey also has no sexual desire whatsoever. Her mother's job, whatever it is, is good enough to afford a maid, a maid that Kristey renders obsolete by means of her own cleaning. Somehow, this intimidates the maid, but if I was the maid I'd spend my new free time cleaning out their fridge, or abusing whatever absurdly expensive television package they have.

Oh, there's also a lot of not-so-passive godmodding in here when it talks about most people as being afraid of her. Regardless of this, she's a huge narcissist and never praises anybody for anything. The rest of the profile is about how much she hates her younger brother Andi, the one her mother Claire hid from her. Through hidden diaries and photographs, Kristey has learned how this brother looks, and seeks him out in order to meet him, the profile noting that whether or not she'd hurt him is somewhat questionable. Her advantage? She's calm and level-headed, and is fine on her own. Her disadvantage?

Too violent.

...Let's start pre-game.

Kristey gets all pissy about her mother going on a business trip, then goes to school to practice playing Moonlight Sonata, which she always does when she's getting frustrated, this time about, who else, her brother. I don't exactly know why she's so mad. I understand the anger at her mother, but the kid himself has done nothing wrong! It's not like her mother still has visits with Andi, or something - she walked out of the marriage! I don't exactly trust hatred like this to be rational - or hatred to at all ever to be rational I mean come on what I am doing here writing myself into a corner - but right here and now I'm not all that sure that it even makes sense in a small way. Anyway, she walks into her classroom, repeating this name Andi in her head and setting herself up for a bad day, and sits down.

This kid named Francis sits next to her, asks her what class it is, and as she acts all annoyed with him he attempts to steal her pencil. Noting this, she grabs his wrist and throws him to the ground in a huff. Other students in the room take notice as she beats the snot out of him, apparently before the teacher appears. Francis attempts to retaliate via pencil stabbing, but she just claws him across the face like it's no big deal. The violence in this thread is being played so cartoonishly that I don't know exactly how much of it is canon!

This all catches the attention of Marvin Hendrick, who starts paying attention just in time to spot Francis steal Kristey's water bottle just as she finishes beating him up, prompting another round of beatings, this time with scissors. How useless are the goddamn teachers in this version, seriously?! Marvin calls in his clique to surround the girl, noting that she's far more psycho than any of their own members. This circle is noteworthy enough to attract Damien Carter-Madison, who notes that the circle is mostly comprised of his own tormentors. Kristey ignores the larger numbers of the group and threatens Marvin, bringing up how scared of her he must be. Shockingly enough, he actually is! Kristey rejects his attempts at recruiting her, pushing him away. The gang falls back, letting the teacher interrogate her, which goes...badly.

The teacher just kind of ignores it, though, even if Tiffany Kristey mocks her from the hallway. What Kristey takes note of here is, instead, Marvin bullying Damien.

Wiki Page wrote:Kristey's relationship to Damien Carter-Madison and why she felt the need to protect him from the Valenti Syndicate in school is never explained in-game.

I don't like this at all. Unexplained character relations, especially one as out of character for Kristey as this one, are forced and unrealistic. Unless some kind of relationship thread is hidden in the annals of the invisionfree board, I think that this not being explained is a pretty huge drawback, all things considered. I did some sleuthing through the site, actually, and while Xaldien had a thread in the pregame discussion section, it was for her other kid, so there's actually no documentation of any established relationship between these two kids.

Anyways, Kristey throws her scissors down when she realizes Tiffany is as much of a bitch as she is. She plays it off as "recognizing one of her own," which is kind of odd because the profile notes her inability/lack of tendency to give people compliments, but, whatever, this makes a little more sense contextually. Then, this guy named Kojiro Isuka shows up and starts bugging Tiffany. He's apparently from one of the other schools, and wastes no time in starting shit with Kristey for no reason, an attack which she is happy to reciprocate. The appearance of Kojiro, however, piques Marvin's interest. Kojiro does some flips or something and fights Kristey, Garrick shoos Kojiro away while Kristey keeps Marvin from hurting Damien, blah blah, then homeroom dismisses and Kristey goes into the hallway to skip class and run off to Hobbsborough where she notices Damien stalking her.

How she notices him is pretty unclear as well, but it's probably just her being observant, somehow, given the packed hallways. Damien is intimidated by this as all living hell, but Kristey seems to not be handling this through violence - instead, she interrogates him about where Hobbsborough is. Then, she does it again, because they start the thread over. The same thing happens, but a little quicker this time, and she puts a hand on his shoulder while she thanks him for the info. I don't know if posts are out of order here, or something stupid happened to the invisionfree board, but there was some kind of issue here and it's much harder to read. The gang surrounds the two, Kristey grabs a kid - Rowland Kelly - and threatens to kill him unless the others let go of Damien and leave him alone personally. She manages to renegotiate the deal, and walks out of it unscathed with Damien. However, she can't stick around, because she has to go to the other school, so she calls a cab on the disposable phone that the gang gives her and heads over.

It's much more of a mess to read than I just put it.

Kristey goes outside for the cab, but decides that it's likely a trap and then goes back inside to sit on a bench in the hallway, deciding to go back to the other school at some other time. She freaks out Damien with her approach, but plays it off cool all of a sudden. This whole suddenly-taking-a-liking-to-Damien thing is starting to grate on me. Kristey walks away after a little while, and Damien goes back to his class to take a test, which is the end of him in the thread, but not for Kristey. She follows Marvin in the hallway until he hides in the bathroom, only coming out because she threatens to drag him away.

Kristey wrote:"Did you eat a brain tumor for breakfast?"

Marvin manages to break away to go to some other place, in order to "get to class" or something, while Kristey reminds him that eventually the two will have the talk she was aiming to have, but part of me is guessing that they never will. Oh well, it's not exactly the biggest missed opportunity, after all I've seen.

The next thread is post-board jump, and takes place in the Sweet Bay Coffee area. Renee sits around, reading an invitation to a party that Damien was invited to. Kristey walks by the building on a stroll downtown to release some steam because the engine powering her eternal anger had some rusted valves so that all the excess anger had to be let out manually via funnel, but decides that the better receptacle for the hot air is Renee, and she opens with a timeless and simple insult appreciated by those of all ages and backgrounds.

Chris D wrote:"Well, if it isn't the one who put the 'whore' back in 'horrible."

Apparently this Renee girl is on some show or something, and most of the thread is spent with her mentally debating whether or not Kristey knows what this show is, while also running some insults at her that don't ever seem to land because for some reason Kristey figured out how to remain calm all of a sudden. Sticking up for Damien just compounds the weirdness here into a weird squishy ball of "Why are you doing what you're doing?" Kristey eventually gets up to leave, but first gets the address to a party from Renee, a party at Franco's place or something. Calls her Raggedy-Anne. Leaves. Meh.

At the party, the first thing Kristey does as she arrives is to insult...herself? She calls herself "the bitch in the red dress," and I don't know what kind of insult that's really supposed to be, but it doesn't really sit right with me at all. Franco welcomes her to the door and introduces her to the party arrangements while Marvin and Renee bicker amongst themselves while Damien makes his way to the door, his mother Nicole holding his hand all the way. Damien seems to want to be holding his mother's hand at this point, likely sensing that something is off. Kristey doesn't interact with the thread for a while, having gone to another room, as the gang's plan to humiliate Damien is set in motion. Kristey finally makes her way over to Renee, asks what there is to do, and sits through another speech before Damien is dragged into the room. Then, the thread ends, because it's V2 pre-game.

So far, my thoughts of Kristey aren't all too great. She gets away with gratuitous violence without so much as a slap on the wrist, displays irrational anger in everything she does, and then sometimes doesn't, for no apparent reason. She gets an aluminum baseball bat as her weapon, and the first thing she does on island is, fittingly, to start breaking things. Amusingly enough, she claims that it's all Renee's fault that she's here, which somehow makes less sense in-character than Damien thinking that it's his mother's fault.

And speaking of Damien, here he comes, fresh out of his first thread, attracted by the sight of the Pagoda and the sound of things breaking, and I can't decide if he's supposed to be startled or happy that the person he ran into is Kristey. She seems welcoming enough to him, and shares her belief that everything is Renee's fault. We learn a little more about what happened, which amounts to "Damien got beat up," right before Peter Rosenthal decides to make himself known, and while Kristey is distracted by him, Damien tries to hit her but is caught up in a psychological break. She talks him down, realizes he's kind of beat up and that it was probably the gang that hates him, asks where they went, and decides, finally, to hunt them down, letting Damien exact revenge. From what I've heard of and read of this kid in the past, I'm guessing that their island time will be spent primarily hunting down these gang members for some reason, as well as her brother for a slightly more informed of a reason, and as hard to get through as this has been, I'm cautiously curious as to how that'll all play out.

God, I wish I could stand to be more thorough with this, but so much of it plays out in such an uninteresting way. It's really painful to get to, and maybe that's just because of how many javelins, how many pointed edges made of incomplete visions and handles made of splintering narratives that I've been struck through with, but right now I'm just having a hard time understanding what exactly is happening or why I should care. In the past, I've been upfront about how many sittings something has taken me, so I'll be honest here and now: Kristey has taken me seven separate sittings so far, and I'm only now just starting her pre-game. No amount of red squiggle lines will stop me from completing this, but my own lack of drive and inner hunger might. Kristey has moved into the territory where she's now highlighting her own narrative consistencies, which is especially painful. Just because you lampshade something does not mean that you can get away with it, for god's sake!

It's really sad that, when Damien brings up Marvin planting the idea of it all being his mother's fault in his mind, I don't feel any kind of reaction, neither of revulsion nor bemusement. I think it really speaks to the quality of what it is, exactly, that I'm reading. Kristey and Peter, sneaking off to make plans to kill Damien if he ever becomes trouble, is kind of funny reading exactly who kills Kristey on her wiki page, but what's more notable here is that it takes her this long to realize that Andi could be here, or to even think of him, which is even funnier considering that Andi is who Peter has been looking for this entire time!

I'm using funny very loosely here, guys. What I mean to say is "mind-numbing."

Damien has been writing a list of people to kill, or something, and he just gets to Kristey's name before he stops when Kristey shows up. I don't know how Damien can twist Kristey's protection into something negative, conflating help with harm, and I can't fathom the mental gymnastics required to accomplish that, but he did. Kristey shoos him out of there, and he revises his list to include some more people while Laz tries his best to make everything seem dramatic and edgy and meaningful with his red text and his big text and his OOC text and gems such as

LaZ pLeAsE wrote:((Cue the opening theme from Shadow of the Colossus...))

Kristey looks around for Peter in the Pagoda and manages to find him, because she lost him earlier while searching for Damien. In the meantime, she wrote her own name, Peter's, and Andi's onto the list, which is just kind of sick in my eyes. She adds Peter's name to get him onboard with the hunt, but Andi is only on there for her own personal game, and his addition to the list only works retroactively once she learns Peter's connection to Andi.

SUDDENLY, SAM SORENSON SHOWS HIMSELF!

And then he's gone again, because he just shows up and leaves, and that's all he contributes to the thread. Bryan and Tori similarly show up, but their purpose is to give Kristey and Peter a real reason to leave, even though the literal naked man running around wasn't enough to convince them that maybe they should be going. As if they needed any further reminder, the announcement goes off, and they run off in the general direction of the hotel, though they instead end up in the Botanical Garden.

Oh, how tempting it is to just read the mid-game eval on the wiki and skip to the end! But I cannot do that. I am held to the oath. That said, I did just skim the next thread up to when Kristey showed up, because Megami and Riserugu post entire novels when they post for some reason, as does LadyMakaze in this instance. Damien is also here, and he accidentally beans a kid across the face just as Peter shows up. Kristey shows up right after, the two having just barely made it out of the Pagoda zone alive. They got semi-lost/panicked on the way, but here they decide to avoid whatever shitshow is occurring in the hotel - good, because I've read approximately what it is that happens in the hotel at this point and I don't like it - to go to the hospital, though that decision doesn't come until after Peter decides he should start rethinking his trust in Kristey, up until they notice Damien still in the bushes, though technically Damien has already fucked off to another thread, but Kristey still feels the need to dissuade him from coming over, and this whole thread people were making references to each other being there when they had already done a thread exit, and I'm just so confused but I'm going to just roll with it, okay? Okay.

They're going to the hospital now. She says it loud enough for him to hear. Peter thinks this is a bad idea, but they keep walking regardless. I get to skip around four pages of the thread here, because the kids I care about don't come in for a while, right up until Peter runs into Vesa and realizes that they've been pen pals or something. What I really care about, in this musty and crowded basement that we call a thread, is Kristey, and Kristey sees Andi, through a window. Peter is what takes Andi's focus, though, as the two have a big reunion hug, and joy, and tears, and suddenly this Matthew guy sneaks up and shoots at them. Andi chases Matthew down, and Kristey gives chase, and in the ensuing brawl she realizes that Andi is a fearsome killer on his own. While Peter patches him up, Kristey has this growing realization that she fears Andi.

This is probably the only positive thing I'll say in the whole write-up, but I like this story on paper. Put into a situation where you can exact revenge on someone you've been meaning to harm, could you really do it? What if you're unable to, because through all this they've proven to be stronger than you? Would you try anyway, or back down?

This Ernest guy comes over too. He introduces himself to Peter, asks how he knows Andi, and Peter finally confesses to being Andi's boyfriend. Kristey can't bring herself to watch this whole thing, but eventually she brings herself to speak and, eventually, to tag along as Andi tries to board things up, but this doesn't last long. While the other two are distracted, she slips away into a thread I'm all too familiar with.

Christ-y wrote:"It's very rude to eavesdrop."

Speaking completely in character, it's all too likely that Kristey saved Mariavel's life, here. This alone is a cardinal sin, and not one I can altogether condone. However, I think it's funny that the first time I clicked the thread for Kristey, I scrolled through the whole thing and couldn't tell where she was, which kind of is telling to just how little she contributes here. She sneaks up on Chiaki, takes a punch, and then whacks her with a bat, strolling off into the distance. She returns now to the Pagoda, runs into this guy named John Davies, a guy who fancies himself a samurai. Standing off to the side, she watches as this guy takes off parts of his uniform, sitting down to rest. Seeing this completely boring guy who can't notice her for some reason reminds her of how much she wants to kill Damien, so she goes off and finds Damien next, because she should have just done that in the first place and spared herself the trouble of accidentally sort of saving Mariavel.

Wouldn't it have been all nice and poetic if they ended where they started, in the pagoda? Nah, instead they're in the forest for this one. Kristey decides that after hearing that Damien has killed someone, she should call out his name when she sees him? Damien doesn't really seem to want to approach her, though, staying behind a tree while the two shout back and forth to each other. She gets all confessional in front of Damien, revealing her weakness and her inability to kill, which is, again, not smart to do in front of someone you know has a grudge against you and has killed other people at this point. She really tries to sell this to Damien, like she's found peace or something. Maybe not the best time or place to do that. Comparing each other's situations with their mothers to each other, and it's kind of like they're having a pissing contest over their own suffering, which does nothing but rub me the wrong way, here.

The only interesting thing we get out of this verbal exchange is Kristey crying. She's finally broken down, all of her anger and rage and hate giving way to a broken interior, the crumbled remains of the heart she once possessed. She wasted her energy fighting and threatening to kill in her past life, but now, when it counts, she's useless. Again, a good idea on paper.

…

A good idea on paper, until she decides to fight him, and rushes at him with the baseball bat. For a while, it really looks like she's going to win - even with a shield of sorts, she still whoops his ass, knocking him to the ground. It's only when he's thrown to the ground again does Damien realize that he still has some fight left in him, and even this fight wouldn't have been enough if Kristey didn't purposefully open herself up for him to take a shot at. Damien hits the jugular, and Kristey crumples to the ground, spitting off some last words that fall a little flat before she bleeds out.

And that's the end.

---

I read Kristey Burrowell, and I didn't like it. She crosses paths with enough noteworthy characters that eventually someone who's really into V2 will have read all of her just by association anyways, and her presence in pre-game is big enough that future scholars will pick up the gist of her character eventually just by osmosis there as well. There were a few interesting moments and ideas throughout her run, but they were few and far between. I don't recommend you read this character, because there just isn't that much to gain from it. The time would be better spent reading one of the kids that deserves it, or a kid that's just so bad that they're entertainingly horrendous. Kristey is just kind of a mediocre read at best.

I think that's it? This writeup turned out a lot longer than I thought it would have, just a couple thousand short of Mariavel's writeup, which surprised me a bit more than I reckon it would surprise most other people. It was a very draining read, and I'm glad it's over. The V2 read-a-thon may be winding down, but the memories will live forever. I'll let other people take it away now. Thanks for everything, and I'll see you all in another place.

~CBP

Okay, time to continue with Jenna Jameson Cassidy.

The core of the character seems to be intact but the writing is a tad bit more solid than before. Unfortunately, Alex didn't make it to the island himself, so she's doomed never to interact with him and that cuts a fair bit of her story short. She does think about him however, hoping she'll run into him, and gang alliances are sure to come into play. Because everybody, fucking EVERYBODY in V2 is in a goddamn West Side Story script. Anywho, Jenna wakes up on a riverbank and is angry because that's probably one of two ways somebody is going to react in this situation. She has a dartboard and Seth Malvice, the boy nearest to her, just so happens to have been given the darts. Har har har, AT, good one. Also highly coincidental.

Anyway, if you can't figure out what happens next, you've never seen an improbable movie action sequence. Seth surprises Jenna and throws a dart at her, and she raises the dart board to protect herself and then runs like hell. And, of course, the dart hits the board in a perfect bullseye because why the hell not? Anyway, that's thread number one for Jenna. She's only in it for two posts.

Next thread, Jenna's ALSO only in this one for two posts. She runs to the school building and trips in the dirt, looking up to see the half-naked body of Jaime Dibenidetti, who unfortunately has been defiled by Sam Sorenson. Her reaction to this is quite possibly the most realistic thing to ever come out of Jenna, as she reacts with disgust and horror similar to the reader, and we're not even there to see it first-hand. Mary-Ann is also there and tries to talk to her, but Jenna's apparently in a coma or something and doesn't respond. The two girls just... exit the thread after Mary-Ann asks Jenna something, and then Mary-Ann isn't even acknowledged in Jenna's next post. So that's kind of a miss for me. Jenna's next thread is back at the river and is one post long, and the post is written by baby_g instead of Chase. 'Phew, that was close' she thinks, and she already doesn't sound like Jenna AT ALL.

Welp, last thread, so let's see how this closes out.

Oh. In one post, Jenna runs at a group of kids all controlled by (or at least posted by) baby_g and attacks them senseless, only to be pushed to the ground by Matthew and then kicked in the ribs, then subsequently stabbed by Stephanie Crew. Very disappointing and careless end to a character that Chase actually put a lot of time and energy into, but then with two threads after that and two posts between them, baby_g clearly just hastily wrote Jenna into a flavorless kill for one of her own characters.

Honestly a huuuuuge letdown.

Hi everyone, I'm Ruggahissy. You may know me from such online role playing games as Survival of the Fittest, 3D hentai twins and Survival of the Knittest. One time I even won one of those. Today I'm here to talk about the winner of V2, Bryan Calvert. Let's begin.

[+] Profile

Bryan's appearance could use some work, but I get the general idea of what he looks like. I’m also really happy that it has information on what he’s wearing! I feel like very few v2 profiles have that information and it makes it hard for me to imagine the kids in my head.

Into the profile proper, Bryan has anger issues, but they make sense and are fairly realistic. He has ADD and touretts and those conditions are represented pretty well (QUE SUPRESA!).  His conditions result in kids picking on him which makes him lash out. He’s sent to a guidance counselor who suggests muay thai as an outlet. His martial arts teacher, Reg, becomes a mentor for him and he gradually chills out and stops having issues at school until high school.

Things go kind of sideways here as he talks about how in high school you can fight people with no consequences (uhhh, more on this in a second) as long as you don’t kill someone. Mmm’kay. He joins the Bloody Fists street gang, one of roughly a thousand street gangs in Denton and his motivation is not so much because he likes the gang or crime, but because his association with them means people hassle him less out of fear of the gang. He can’t get a girlfriend, but he doesn’t care that much. His grades are average, but he doesn’t care about them either. He ends up beating some football kids so bad they end up seriously injured, he is suspended from school (consequences!) and the suspension takes place during finals causing him to fail all his classes and have to repeat sophomore year. Upon returning to school he gets in a minor scuffle and is assigned to assist CJ THE HOOKHANDED JANITOR. He BEFRIENDS THE HOOK HAND JANITOR and after his punishment is over he continues to volunteer to help him just out of friendship. I love this, and I love CJ. In personality he is described as serious and short tempered and someone who wants to reach out to people, but is too proud. He is also described as honorable, which is credited to his two mentors, Reg the martial arts teacher and CJ THE HOOK JANITOR.

This is information that I collected during his run in the game and should be in the profile but is not: he gets along well with his family, has a younger brother and younger sister he loves, he feels like he's not good at anything in life besides fighting and is unsure what he'll do after school. All gravy so far. Some weird gang stuff aside, it's fine by V2 standards.

[+] Pregame

In his first pregame thread he comes to school late and gives us some helpful exposition on who the Bloody Fists are, how the gangs in this world work and talks to his best friend, CJ THE JANITOR. He also has some thoughts about how Mariavel is a “psychobitch” and “bimbo” that is “great eye candy” and I feel unhappy. I will defend Maraivel here and say that this makes me not like Bryan a little, but his interaction with the kindly janitor makes up for it.

Next we head to “How Many Ways Can You Define the word ‘Cow’” which I already read for Jack and has been covered several times. Mariavel slaps a boy who pushes her, Jenna calls her a slut, Lavender screams at their English teacher. Bryan has a single two sentence post where he watches the madness and then leaves when the bell rings. Not sure why he bothered to be in this one.

CJ THREAD! [vuvuzela celebration noises]. CJ loves being a janitor, but he loves the kids more. He has a habit of calling all the kids “Mr.” or “Miss” and “Sir and “M’am” and then their last name as a sign of respect and is never to busy to talk when you need someone to talk to. Bryan says that the habit of calling people Mr. and Miss rubbed off on him, but we’ll see if that’s true or if he forgets about it.

Ali Grayston says that CJ is gross and creepy and probably a pedophile, so I don’t care what happens to her on the island. Tori also says she’s grossed out by the hook hand. I guess it’s just CJ and Bryan, together forever.  Tori says she’s new to the school so CJ points her to her class. She’s late so CJ writes her a note saying she’s excused from being tardy. Bryan teases Tori and tells her Ali is a bitch. Then CJ and Bryan go off to clean things. CJ says it looked like Bryan was smitten with the new girl and tells him to be nice to her.

CJ wrote:CJ smiled.  "Hey, all I'm saying is, you should make a good impression on her. I know you have a hard time getting along with some people..."

CJ tells Bryan that he’s a good man, deep down, and this touches Bryan, who smiles a little as he leaves.

I love you, CJ.

The next thread takes places immediately after. Bryan goes to his locker, but he forgot his lunch and doesn’t have enough to buy food from the cafeteria. Tori comes back and offers him a snack bar from her purse if he’ll show her around. She hands the bar to Bryan and Cyco says the bar is called “Figgin’ Delicious” which is an excellent fake snack food bar name. I looked it up, doesn’t seem to be real, but I love love love clever fake product names in pre-game. Tori talks his ear off about her ex-boyfriend and he’s half-listening listening and trying to be nice. She asks him what he wants to do when he grows up and he says he wants to be a cook and open his own restaurant some day. God please, let it be canon that he moved to Montana or Vermont or something after he won and opened an award-winning pizzeria. Anyway, Tori is flirting up a storm and he’s not responding. She gets upset and asks point blank if he likes her and he says she’s nice. She gets frustrated that he’s not more into her and starts getting emotional so he offers to take her some place other than school.

That place is the beach! Last pregame thread and Byran carts Tori to the beach via public transportation. I think Bryan can do better, but here we are.

Bryan wrote:He could admit he was a fairly simple person; he wasn't at all deep, and he didn't try to fake it by saying things that sounded profound but were just bullshit. He had simple desires. He would've been quite happy just standing on that beach forever, listening to the sounds and watching the neverending stalemate between sand and surf and just whistling a familiar tune to himself. That would've been good enough for him.

What a guy. Incidentally, remember this moment because it will become relevant all the way at the end roughly 5,000 words from now.

Here we also learn that Reg, his muay thai instructor that became his mentor, fought in the Korean War and lost most of his friends in he war. He got a piece of grenade shrapnel lodged in his spine during the war too. When he returned to the United States he fell in love and got  married, but his wife was killed by a mugger and his brother died in a car accident a year later. As time passed and Bryan grew up, Reg lost the use of his legs, but could still teach martial arts. Earier in the year he’d lost the space downtown he was using as the muay thai studio, but still teaches out of home and Bryan is a frequent visitor. He has children and grandchildren but they don’t visit. He spends a lot of his time in his wheelchair, teaching muay thai to a small group and is happy despite his hardships, and he thinks of Bryan as family.

;~;

Bryan and Tori sit and look at the ocean quietly for awhile. Bryan never ate the “Figgin’ Delicious” bar and he’s hungry, so he suggests going to the pier for food and Tori agrees to buy him junk food, but only if he takes her to dinner on a date. Bryan STILL DOES NOT SEEM TO GET IT (in an endearing way), and despite being flat broke and having no clue how he’d pay for a dinner, he agrees. They get up from where they were sitting and before he leaves he looks at the spot where they sat together and where she asked him out. He promises to remember that spot forever. That’s his spot, and he’ll come back to it. In the game it says she bought him a corn dog or a hamburger at the pier depending on who is remembering the events.

Pregame thoughts: There are a lot of bumps in his pregame and things I could do without. I don’t like how he talks and thinks about girls and he’s a bit hard to get to know at times, but what is good in his pregame is great. You learn a lot about this person, his values and his hopes for the future. His interactions with Tori are charmingly awkward and by the end of their last thread, I believe that there’s a spark.

[+] The Island Part 1 Game time

Built to Survive

A oneshot wherein Bryan wakes up and has some really interesting visual language. The way he opens his eyes, sees the light and tries to stand up is described very beautifully. He has a huge burst of anger and screams and cries for a bit. Then he looks in his bag and sees he has been given a large gun.  There’s a manual so he reads it and practices loading the gun. He wonders if he can kill people he knows from school, like the other Bloody Fists and Tori. He then thinks that he wasn’t very close to anyone at school (except CJ of course, who he mentions) and tries to tell himself he could kill to survive, but there’s a hint of doubt. He also wants to survive to prove to people that he can actually achieve something. He's never really achieved anything prior. Mostly solid, could have done with a little more about his hesitation to murder people he knows as the post ends with bravado and a promise to let people know how dangerous he is, but that’s a pretty small complaint.

The Very Basic Will To Live

Andrew and Felix are scuffling. Andrew sees Bryan slink in with a shotgun and runs off. Bryan takes a shot at Felix and misses when Felix hits the deck. Felix gets his own gun and shoots at Bryan’s hiding spot, but shoots out the tail light of a truck. Felix immediately runs away.

Harry Constantine walks in with a gun of his own and tells Bryan to freeze, but instead Bryan runs for cover behind the truck. Harry tries to convince Bryan to put down his gun because the kids are not each other’s enemies, the terrorists are the real enemies, and if everyone would stop trying to kill each other they might be able to band together, come up with a plan, and beat them. Oh Harry, you dumb idiot. You’re in the wrong version. If only you’d been in one of the ones where people were willing to talk. Bryan is like “DON’T TELL ME WHAT TO DO, YOU’RE NOT THE BOSS OF ME!” but to his credit, the narrative acknowledges he’s being stupid. He tries to get a good view of Harry by tossing out a mirror he pulls of the truck, but can’t get a clear shot so he leaves.

This is my least favorite thread so far. I don’t know why Bryan decided to involve himself with the Andrew/Felix fight, we’re not given any information about his headspace on this decision. He also proves unwise in rejecting Harry who seems to be one of the saner people on the island, but at least Cyco acknowledges that it’s a bad choice and that Bryan is too stubborn for his own good. It plays into his general pattern of not trusting people.

Dan Birch

Have we ever had a thread named after a character? Well this one is. Dan Birch’s starting and death thread. Bryan comes in and we learn that he tried to kill those people in the last thread because he thinks playing the game is a good strategy and wants to kill some people for their stuff. He barges into a house Dan is hiding in and they have a pretty good fight where it’s Dan’s spear vs. Bryan’s shotgun in close quarters. Bryan manages to get enough space to shoot Dan. Dan thinks about his life with an abusive father who beat his wheelchair-bound mother. He thanks Bryan for the quick death, saying he hated his life anyway and some of his last words are “Bet there’s someone you want to save, Bryan?” which sticks with Bryan. He apologizes to Dan, and decides not to loot his bag out of respect, but takes his broken spear. Bryan has succeeded in his first kill, but he feels uncomfortable and empty with what he’s done. He thinks that he’s done this bad thing, but he probably won’t even win. So what was the point? He reflects on whether or not there’s someone he wants to save.

Btw: it’s a good death.

Hiding in the Barn

Night falls and Bryan thinks about how much he loves the moon at night without all the bright city lights. We get even more information that’s not in his profile: he loves both his parents and gets along well with them, he has a younger sister named Jillian and a younger brother named Brandon and he has a cairn terrier named Maggie who always waits at the window for him to return from school. He also thinks about Reg and HOOKHAND CJ and how he’s not that afraid of death because being nothing doesn’t bother him. He has a silver cross around his neck (mentioned in the profile, but not explained) that belonged to his grandfather, Charles Calvert, who was from Northern Ireland and inspired Bryan to be a hard worker. Bryan asked for the necklace as something to remember him by. He bumps into Tori and they’re both happy to see each other. I found this to be cute: Tori was apparently at a loss of what to do, so she followed the north star which led her to Bryan. They leave together.

This thread had some hints before Tori showed up that she was the one Bryan wanted to find after Dan’s cryptic words to him.

Well…isn’t this fucking great?

No. Bryan and Tori come in and leave in one post. They just pass through this area and that’s it, as if this location was something they HAD to travel through to get to the caves. I don’t understand.

Tom and Becky

Tori and Bryan try to go to the lighthouse, but it’s in use. They go to the caves instead. He pulls out the spear tip he took from Dan and Tori asks where he got it. He lies badly, saying he found it and she presses him (dangerous idea?) until he tells the truth about the murder. She’s not that bothered though. He offers it to her and after joking around she accepts it. Their joking around lands and they seem very comfortable together. In the morning the first announcements play (it seems like more than one day should have passed, but whatever) and Bryan doesn’t hear the names of any kids from his school. In a moment of unusual cleverness,  he makes note of the weapons that were used to kill so that even though he may not know the murders by name, he’ll know if they’ve killed based on their weapon. Sadly this idea never pays off or comes back.

The Remake

I’m getting tired. Bryan and Tori go to the mall. He tells her to stay put while he looks around and she’s mad he’s treating her like a child. She’s right to be mad, but you get the impression Bryan just doesn’t know how to be tactful. Another kid runs up and attacks her while she is alone because……uh…… and she fights him off with the spear tip until Bryan hears the fight and shoots him. She gets mad that he A. Left her and B. Didn’t believe she could handle it herself when she’d already gotten two good slashes on the guy. Bryan apologizes and says he’s acting this way because he wants her to be safe. Also we get a memory of her wearing rain boots to a pageant and winning, but infuriating her mother as a result, which I think shows us she’s stubborn and doesn’t like being ordered around. This relates back to Bryan ordering her to stay put while he scouts ahead.  She’s not super forgiving of Bryan, but during the argument they kiss. They separate, unsure of what the kiss means and continue on.

[+] Part 2 Partners

Checking In

Bryan wonders if he’s in love with Tori and he concludes that he’s not because they don’t know each other that well. I don’t entirely believe him. Still, he feels he has to protect her. Tori really seems to be the more aggressive party in this relationship as far as trying to get closer to Bryan. Tori on the other hand, thinks about how much she admires Bryan for being brave, strong and knowing what to do in this situation.

[ I stopped here for the night]

I’m awake again on day 2 of reading Bryan and a few things have stuck with me. One, I think Dan Birch’s death was very good and his words still kind of linger with me as I read this. Who does Bryan have to protect, and why?

The second thing I have starting this day is a conversation I had with Aura, who was assigned Tori. I opined to him that I like Tori and Bryan, but that it seems like they are two people who have trouble connecting just due to how their personalities are and that the mismatch in emotional communication is sad to watch, but it’s neither of their faults. Aura responded that given more time in the regular world, Tori and Bryan could have worked through that and become stronger for it, but that it could never be and perhaps that was the point.

Hmmm


I wake up on day three and I’m only able to finish Checking In while waiting for my lunch. Days 2 and 3 I wasn’t able to get much headway here because Monday and Tuesday are the worst days at work for deadlines and my editor is having some stuff that required me to get all my work in on these two days. But you don’t want to know about me, you want to know about Bryan.

Tori and Bryan meet MARIAVEL and to my shock, she is mostly a reasonable human in this thread. After being raped and almost raped she first sees Tori and is a total bitch to her. She softens up when she sees Bryan because she considers Bryan a friend. To the extent that he can be, he is happy to see her and makes a joke about all the other people’s blood she’s covered in.  Tori remembers that back in pregame Ali told her that Mariavel is close to Bryan and she gets a little jealous, wondering how close they are.

Mariavel is mad rude to Tori (she asks why Bryan would choose someone who looks so weak and dumb to partner with), but Tori doesn’t take the bait and offers her a cloth to get some of that blood off. The three head up stairs and run into the body of Mariavel’s attempted rapist which freaks her out and she refuses to go ahead while sobbing. Tori stays with Mariavel to comfort her and tells Bryan to scout out the hotel without them while Tori looks after Mariavel. Bryan agrees to this and they separate for now.

This sentence is the Tori appreciation sentence, what a gal.

I talk to Aura about how I wish Bryan was a little better with people. Mariavel is….not the best person… but it’s tough to see her break down, but Bryan has no inclination to help out, leaving that to Tori. Aura points out that this is something that CJ explicitly told Bryan he needed to work on back in the pregame. Bryan’s lack of emotional intelligence and difficulties in connecting with people comes across as  choice by Cyco and it’s something that has been acknowledged by him a lot as one of Bryan’s weaknesses, so it’s nice to see this disadvantage come into play and be a true disadvantage. It’s a strength of the writing that I like Bryan so much that I wish he could overcome some of his flaws. Aura also points out that Tori has the emotional intelligence Bryan lacks while Bryan has the survival drive that she admires, making them a pretty good match up both as characters and within the story.

Stopping for the Night
It’s funny because it’s the afternoon of day FOUR for me, but this is “Stopping for the Night.” This had a content warning on it, but at least in reading up until Bryan ran out there was nothing objectionable? Second least favorite thread from Bryan. He walks up and finds his friend and gang leader, Seth, pointing a gun at Mariavel’s rapist while Zed and Andrew are also near I guess. The location is quickly declared a danger zone and everyone has to run out. Tori and Marivael have left a message written in Niche's blood on the first floor to let Bryan and Seth know where they will be at the school and Seth tells Bryan to meet him at the school as well. Everyone hauls ass. Not much here to comment on.

Walking to School

Very little actually happens in this thread which is a one-shot of Bryan doing exactly what the title says, walking to school.
The bulk of this one-shot is actually devoted to a memory of Reg, his martial arts instructor. I see Reg’s name in the first sentence and I know this will break my heart. Reg, along with HOOKHAND CJ is one of Bryan’s more important positive role models in his life. It details how he couldn’t keep his location downtown for the martial arts studio due to not bringing in enough income and also describes how he tried to make his home into a replacement gym.He hangs the old gym sign outside his house on the front porch, but Bryan is honest in saying that it looks unprofessional. Bryan is one of his oldest students, who remembers how he only needed a cane to walk when he first started as a little kid, but he is now wheelchair-bound, but still teaches at 74 years old.

Despite his hardships, Reg is an optimist and imparts a positive outlook to Bryan. While Bryan is Reg’s house after class, a boy tells Reg he wants to join the army to become a sniper. Reg tells him that going to war is not worth what he could lose. He says that his pursuit of violence will cause him to give up everything else in life and only to join if he's prepared to lose that. Bryan remembers this warning.

MY HEART CAN’T TAKE IT.

The Wicked Game

Enough of that! Now we’re at "Wicked Game" and it looks like Bryan took a wrong turn because we’re in the industrial district, not the school. It’s raining so I’m assuming from Aura and Crossbow’s write-ups that right now Tori and Mariavel are hiding out in the school from the rain, just for me to mentally keep tabs on Tori.

Bryan wrote:“He was forgetting about Tori. She was counting on him and he was standing in the rain looking for ghosts of enemies. At least she was with Mari.”

My dude, Tori would be better off being babysat by George the island cat.

Bryan seeks shelter in a building from the rain, but Kyle sees him coming. He wants that shotgun. As Bryan walks in, Kyle hits him in the head with a brick and that makes Bryan pretty angry. In his shock, Bryan drops the gun, but recovers and knees Kyle in the ribs. Kyle tries to climb up a fire escape, Bryan grabs him and the fire escape hilariously collapses. Bryan head butts him, breaking his nose and then wails on him for awhile until he has successfully beaten Kyle to death with his bare hands. Guess he didn’t listen closely enough to the advice in that flashback. Bryan says he feels better, but he also feels sort of hollow, not as good as he thought he would. There’s that sneaky fucking lesson.

Rob of Matt and Rob [laugh track] comes out and tells Bryan he and his friends don’t want any trouble and that he can take shelter from the rain with them as long as he chills out. Bryan asks Rob if Kyle was one of his friends and Rob says no. Bryan goes back with him and Rob tells him to maybe lie to his friends and say that Kyle escaped so as not to scare them. Bryan says he doesn’t care what Rob tells them, but wants to make it clear to the other boy that he wasn’t the aggressor. Bryan thinks about what would happen if he and his new friends are the final four and concludes maybe they could draw straws. He quickly tries to forget about this possibility.

This actually isn’t the first time Bryan has thought about what would happen if he and someone he liked made it to the end. Every time he does, he doesn’t come to a definitive conclusion and tries to forget about it. He doesn’t want to kill people just to make sure he comes out the winner. Even with these total strangers he just met, because they’re nice, he doesn’t even want to consider killing them to win and would prefer it be decided by chance.

Announcements!

This location is also a danger zone and the group wants to go to the hospital, which is on the way to the school. Bryan offers to escort the group to the hospital. Now he accepts that for Tori to live, he has to die. Bryan says he grew up Protestant and never minded going to church, but distanced himself from it because being religious was seen as sort of uncool. He thinks about what is after death and decides that as long as he saves Tori, he doesn’t matter what waits for him in death.(I have bad news for you, Bryan, but that can wait).

Cold Cash and Colder Hearts

Bryan drops Matt and Rob off at the hospital.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯

We Survive By Friendship

Tori and Mariavel arrive first. Mariavel decides she’s going to live despite what other people want. Tori starts rifling through the old homework in the classroom to pass the time. One assignment is “If you were stuck on an island and could only bring one person with you who would you bring and why?” It’s kind of silly, but I buy it because that sounds like a real writing prompt to give kids. The kid responds that she would bring her classmate David because he’s kind to her and makes her feel like she’s not a loser. The kid invites the teacher to visit her on her island with his wife.

I really like this and I don’t know why. It makes Tori think of the Q&A portions of the beauty pageants she used to do. She says when asked similar questions she just responded with a joke. Now she thinks she’d choose Bryan and prays for his safety.
Mariavel has a flashback to her days as a stripper (why?) and Tori can tell she’s reliving something bad. I should probably stop chronicling their part of the scene because this is the BRYAN writeup, not the TORI or MARIAVEL writeup, but it’s a decent scene. Tori is the audience surrogate observing Mariavel.

Shit goes sideways and Bryan finally shows up. Tori is ecstatic and jumps on him. Amusingly, he sees Tori’s got the axe Mariavel had and casually asks Tori if she killed Mariavel. Also he doesn’t return her hug, the fucker. She’s pissed he’s not more excited to see her which like, yeah. That’s fair. Bryan is now annoyed that she is annoyed, saying they have to find Seth. They start to snap at each other because now they are both annoyed and they are also both really tired. He lets her have the first sleep and she uses his lap as a pillow.He doesn’t get the significance, but he does say “you’re welcome” kind of embarrassed. He just beat a dude to death and he’s embarrassed about being close with this girl. Whaddya gonna do?

Tori falls asleep and despite his best intentions Bryan falls asleep too. Tori is woken up by some weird noise and she shakes Bryan awake who insists he was just resting his eyes. Cute. Bryan goes to check it out and it’s SHAE CUTTING THE LEG OFF A DEAD GIRL. I physically moved my body away from the computer because I was not ready for that. Bryan just kills him on the spot with an axe which was the right call since he was about to eat her (still beating somehow?) heart.

The dead girl is Lavender. Bryan didn’t like her that much, but knew her. Out of reverence to Mariavel and Lavender’s family he tries to put most of her pieces back where they should go and then covers the body. Tori is getting sad because she’s thrown a lot of hints that she is romantically interested in Bryan and Bryan hasn’t returned most of them. They flirt a little and agree to wait one more day for Seth at the school. Back to sleep.

Announcements wake them up and Bryan’s won a BKA so they have to go to the beach, which is thematically important for the both of them because that’s where their one and only sort-of-date was. To the beach!

[+] Part 3

BODOM BEACH TERROR

I’m getting very tired, but I still like Tori and Bryan. I imagine maybe I’m starting to feel as beleaguered as they do, like I’m in this together with them.
I went back to Wikia to check something and the ad on the side was a dude holding a huge plate of meat which I didn’t need so soon after the cannibal. Steve Wilson, terrorist and principal of Bathurst, comes to drop off the BKA and thinks about how Bryan hung out with “that wretchedly disgusting janitor. He can go fuck himself.

*IMPORTANT CONTENT AHEAD*

Wilson taunts Bryan, asks him if he deserves the prize and asks  what he even has to go back to. Bryan laughs at him because he’s killed five people, yes he deserves it. Also he has a loving family to go back to, (guess Wilson wasn’t a good principal and didn’t pay attention to the students) but even with that as potential motivation, he says he has no plans to go return home because he made a promise to himself to keep, which I think refers to keeping Tori safe. Wilson is like “LoL IdiOt, theRe CAn’t BE 2 wiNNarS” because he's stupid and doesn't understand subtle implications.

He returns to Tori on the beach when Harry Constantine from earlier sees them. He assumes Tori is a hostage and starts shooting and demanding Bryan release the hostage.

[sigh]

I can’t tell if this is a good line of thought from Harry. He did see Bryan at his peak player-mode before he switched gears. Bryan and Tori take cover behind a rock in the water and Harry shoots at them. When he’s out of ammo he tries to get closer to their location by going underwater. Bryan grabs Tori and they also go underwater. Harry pops up, Bryan see’s his legs and then pops up next to him and shoots him. I didn’t dig this death. Cyco controls both Harry and Bryan, but Harry comes out of no where and it doesn’t really serve a narrative purpose. Feels like he just needed to kill him quickly.

THIS COULD BE ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD

But it’s not. They are heading to the hotel again and crossing out the perms-danger zones on their map. Tori tries to break the silence by asking how the gun he gave her works. He thinks it’s a stupid question and I am about to be mad, but then he realizes that she’s probably never held a gun before and it’s a valid inquiry. You’re safe this time, Calvert. She confides that she hates weapons, but she’ll handle the gun because she wants to pull her weight with Bryan. They’re both gross with sea water so they get to a hotel room and Tori takes a shower while Bryan organizes their stuff. She leaves her pants by the window to dry after and sits on the bed in the hotel room while wearing her shirt and a towel and BRYAN BECOMES A LITTLE FLUSTERED. Always a gentleman, he tells her to rest. They talk about Harry; neither of them knew him. Then we get this:

Tori and Bryan wrote: She wormed around for a second, to quickly pull the sheets from under her to now over top of her.
"Is it weird that I don't want to win anymore?"

"Doesn't matter much anyway," he grunted, leading the white bandage between his fingers slowly. He didn't look at her, instead his eyes were fixed intently on what he was doing. "It's not your choice anymore. I've made it my business to see that you do."

Strong moment, but Tori just thinks about how strong he is so she drops the ball a little. Announcements happen (AND THEY HAVE A QUEEN SONG PLAY BEFORE THEM?). Bryan notes Mariavel is killing a lot and they should not trust her. Oh buddy, oh friend. Oh honey.

The peace is interrupted when Felix and Rob get to the hotel and Felix shoots at them. Bryan shoots back and he and Tori climb to the roof. Seth sees Bryan and Tori climbing with Felix in pursuit and decides to help them. Felix and Tori trade insults and she SWINGS HER AXE AT HIM, YES. Doesn’t kill him though and she’s shot in the leg. Felix takes Tori hostage and tells Bryan to drop his weapons if he wants her alive. Without a second thought, Bryan drops everything. Seth to the rescue! He shoots Felix and Tori is free. But then Seth is shot by Felix! I don’t know. Point is, they are both dying. Bryan…..kicks Felix…over a roof? They’re on the roof and he throws him to another roof?

Tori’s been shot in the leg, Bryan’s been shot in the arm and Seth’s been shot in the everywhere. It’s time for a death scene.

Fun facts: I had to read Seth’s death like 5 years ago when I applied for staff because part of the test is making an announcement and the deaths are pulled from across the versions to make sure you read. A lot of people fucked up Seth’s death because they didn’t read it carefully, but I wasn’t one of them. Most people didn’t bother to read they were actually friends. I actually liked this death, it’s probably the first V2 thing I ever read.

Bryan feels guilty because he felt like he abandoned Seth by not waiting longer for him at the school and feels even worse that despite that, Seth still saved them. He’s a true friend and Bryan doesn’t have many of those. Bryan breaks down in tears and apologizes for not waiting longer for him, Seth tells him not to feel bad. Seth doesn’t want him feeling bad because it wasn’t Bryan’s fault and he doesn’t want him upset over something he can’t change.

Bryan wrote:"You're a good friend, Seth...the best."

Seth says that the gang was a family to him. He loves Mariavel too, but concludes she’s totally lost it and tells Bryan that he wants him to win and live on. He asks Bryan to do him the honor of killing him instead of letting Felix get the credit. Bryan refuses to say he’ll win, thinking to himself that it has to be Tori. He shoots Seth between the eyes because he loves him and Seth is killed instantly.
Rob finally goes up to see what’s happening and he and Bryan are happy to see each other! Remember, Bryan took him to the hospital? Time to return the favor.

Fun facts: Tori’s middle name is Anne! Also, her mother used to hit her.

Tori’s being carried by Bryan and she’s losing blood. Rob offers to help, but Tori refuses to trust anyone but Bryan.

CARRY STRESS IN THE JAW 


They get to the hospital.

Bryan wrote:"Hey," he piped up, shifting Tori with his arms to stir her in case she'd fallen asleep again. "Wake up, pumpkin, we're at grandma's."

Oh you.

Having done a good deed, Rob leaves. He’s like Spiderman, everyone gets one.

After a brief freakout over Bryan using a needle to administer pain killers so he can dig the bullet out of her, Tori tries to console him over Seth. Tori starts tending to his wounds and he gives her a kiss.

Bryan wrote:'This girl's gonna kill me,' he thought as he leaned in and kissed her. 'But it's ok. Almost over. Everything's going to be ok.'

Mi corazón

Bryan and Tori prepare to make the hospital their last stand. Bryan plans to get a wheelchair for her and he is prepared to die. He hopes to himself that he doesn’t go to hell and hopes meet Seth again.

I think I might actually cry.

Bryan comes upon an unconscious Mariavel and plans to shoot her but Tori just can’t let him since they bonded earlier. In a move that will doom everyone, Tori convinces Bryan to help Mariavel and in the move that further seals their fate, Bryan leaves the girls alone. Mariavel wakes up and tells Tori that Bryan probably left them alone on purpose, hoping she’d kill Tori for him so he could win. Strong argument, I can’t lie. Bryan runs back at the sound of gun fire but it’s too late, Tori’s fatally injured. Mariavel runs away, but apologizes to Tori in her mind.

Tori lays dying in Bryan’s arms and he tells her he can fix it, he prays to God to forgive him for his mistake and begs God to give him just one more chance.

[Crying starts now]

Tori came home from her first day at Bathurst and told her parents about Bryan and the date they went on. There’s a continuity error here because she says she bought him a burger and he said 10 threads ago she bought him a corndog BUT I AM LISTENING TO BJORK AND CRYING TEARS.  In the present Tori says she should have listened to Bryan. She can’t speak anymore due to dying, but thinks that she was lucky to meet him and that her death was her own fault. She looks at him one more time, thinks of their date on the beach and dies.

Bryan wrote: Her breathing had stopped. She was dead. That was it; you lose, thanks for playing.

Bryan is crushed. That was his reason for living. He didn’t even want to live past the game. It was for her. He rages and destroys a bunch of stuff in the room.

TEARS ARE FREE FLOWING.

He goes to find Mariavel, not caring if he lives or dies.

REDEMPTION

Ok, I’ve stopped crying. Mariavel blames Bryan for Seth’s death and refuses to believe it was a mercy kill. She uses that as justification for killing Tori since Seth was her boyfriend. She yells at him that it’s his fault Tori died as they fight and the words are starting to get to him. He follows her into another area and sees blonde hair. He shoots, but it’s the wrong blonde. Whitney dies and Ricky screams at him in a parallel to Bryan watching his loved one die. Bryan sputters out an apology, thinking back to DAN FUCKING BIRCH, LONG TIME NO SEE. Ricky tells Bryan that that was the girl he loved, he was protecting her and he failed because of Bryan. He tells Bryan none of the remaining three of them deserves to return home and is ready to shoot him, but Whitney begs him to let Bryan go. The similarities are not lost on Bryan, Whitney sounds just like Tori to him. He leaves to find Mariavel and Ricky shoots himself.

My brains is turning to soup, but Megami takes over for Mariavel. She talks about how if she and Bryan and Seth had just come together sooner they could have figured a way out and blames him for prioritizing Tori over his friends. They fight for a bit and FINALLY FINALLY Bryan kills her via hammer to the back of the head. He asks the corpse why she didn’t come after him instead of Tori. He is the winner, and he is miserable. He doesn’t feel any better now that Mariavel is dead because nothing will bring back Tori. He has failed.

END

Bryan is picked up by the terrorists and plans to kill Danya, it’s not like Bryan cares if he’s gunned down right after anyway. The terrorists patch him up and throw him in a room. Danya comes by to say hi and Bryan doesn’t really care and doesn’t talk much. I find out I palgerized V2 without realizing it when Danya says they would have preferred for Mariavel to win. Danya says because Bryan was so popular with the general public, they want to throw him in V3.

Spoilers, he’s not in V3.

He gets a knife out of his boot because the V2 terrorists are just as bad as the V1 terrorists at searching people and threatens Danya.

Bryan wrote:"You're the Ace. SOTF ends with you." He knew he was really just trying to convince himself at this point.

Ah, I have bad new- you know what, never mind.

Danya says if he drops the knife Bryan will go home AND as an added bonus he’ll kill Steve Wilson. Sounds like a good deal to me. Danya then asks him if Tori would want him to die after everything.

And then V2 suddenly ends with no resolution and no answer to that question. [/spoiler2]

Final thoughts: Bryan is good. He's really good. I'd say he's probably the best character in all of V2 and one of the best characters in the history of SOTF. Bryan and Tori are probably my favorite couple I've ever read in in this game. He's the most tragic of all the SOTF winners. He falls in love with a girl and also views himself as not inherently worth a lot, so dedicates himself to propelling her to the win, but fails. He has a good heart, but a lot of flaws and I would highly recommend him.

Editor's note: Crossbow and I came to the conclusion that while Mariavel claims a more romantic relationship with Seth, Seth sees her with sisterly love.

Alright, ELI MCCONNELL, let's kick it.

Let's take a look at the profile, and

"Hair is naturally auburn and color, and unlike many in Gilroy suddenly wanting to dye their hair in these radical colors in order to gain attention from not only friends, but also it seemed the staff as well."

This is like the 4th sentence, and the startlingly bad grammar present doesn't really fill me with hope on the readability of the rest of it.

His appearance section decides that him having worn eyeliner for literally ONE HOUR of his life is notable enough to mention, but otherwise there's nothing that off kilter about. As for his profile, he's not a psychopath or a former killer or anything like that, so that's good I guess? His father runs a big business in NYC and his mother runs a smaller one in Denton, so he just... doesn't see his father, apparently? They're not divorced, and I guess his dad has to live in NYC for his job... and his mom isn't willing to just live with him in the city, especially considering the fact that he seems fabulously wealthy? Some people are really attached to their own businesses, sure, but she's really prioritizing her own work over her kids EVER SEEING THEIR FATHER? But nothing in the profile indicates that he dislikes her for this or anything, so I guess he's just cool with it. Eli's just mad at his dad because his dream is photography, but his dad just wants him to run his super successful business when he grows up, ugh, dads are the WORST. But then the end of the profile mentions Eli "not wanting to work in a factory all day like his father wants him too", so apparently he is supposed to run the company but also work in a factory? Maybe publishing companies just have really hand-on CEOs, I'm certainly no expert.

But this isn't the worst logic I've ever seen, and otherwise Eli is just a normal boy, so he's got some potential here. One minor detail I like is that one of his main hobbies is piano, despite him having only done it for about a year. It's entirely possible that this was just thrown in by Eli's writer to meet a hobby requirement without having to work it into the backstory too much, but I find it pretty realistic that he's into something that he's just started - not every hobby someone has has been a huge part of their lives for 4+ years, and I feel like that's not represented enough in profiles. But maybe I just haven't read enough profiles.

Luckily for me, Eli doesn't appear to have any pre-game, so onto the island we go! He starts off by waking up in the Botanical Garden and going 'woe is me' and all that stuff until he cuts his hand on his weapon, a coil of barbed wire. Nice and... effective. He patches himself up before running into Eric Silvstedt, and Eric...

"Well... hello," he cooed wickedly.

Eric coos at him. Wow.

I'm like Eli more and more - in his next post, he both realizes that this Obviously Evil Boy is Obviously Evil AND briefly wonders if he's being judgemental, while also thinking about how his fencing skills aren't super useful because they don't teach you how to actually gosh darn kill people. This all strikes me as very realistic, and shows Eric as a sharp kid just trying to figure out HOW to survive.

But Eric just kinda punches him and knocks him to the ground and starts strangling him, and then Matthias shows up with Whitney and kicks Eric in the head because apparently they've had some beef in the past, and then they start DRAMATIC DIALOGUING at each other... Eli just isn't really being given a chance to breathe in this scene (pun TOTALLY intended) because all the other characters have this history and forcefulness and ~drama~ to them that he just ends up in the background.

And then DAMIEN CARTER-MADISON.

Damien comes in being all psychotic and diabolical and using song posts and a bunch of other things that no human should partake in and watches the fight go on. He notices Eli and Eli notices Damien but they still don't really do anything as Eric and Matthias just kinda keep fighting until they both run off and Whitney follows and Peter and Kristey show up and Damien has more beef and a LIST or something and Eli just doesn't MATTER...

And then the next thread rolls along and I realize he's gone inactive! Yaaaaaaaay.

laZardo takes over Eli for his final thread, in which Eli acts wildly out of character to prop Damien up by apparently not noticing his Obvious Evil whatsoever and just lashing out at Damien over a slight indication that he might have seen the person he's looking for on the island (something which is mentioned a few times but never really seems to drive him). So Damien knocks him down with his pot lid, steals Eli's barbed wire, and strangles him with it before bold red text-ing off into the distance. I repeat: Yaaaaaaaay.

---

So Eli was yet another example of a character who was mildly interesting with a bit of potential that got overshadowed by V2's, um, forceful personalities and then had his handler go inactive and got a death worse than what he probably deserved. Not a bad read, but still a definite pass for lack of impact.

Alrighty, these are being made as I go. I dig Pregame, so I'm reading that too.

Jackie's first thread is a one-shot that probably wasn't meant to be; there was some baggage with the V1 site and a lot of stuff got locked down for a long time.

Anyways, what I like here is that Jackie's quickly established as pretty image-conscious—we get it directly here:

He blushed only slightly as Mrs. Lanely introduced him and mentioned that he was a transfer student from Canada. Jackie waved a smooth hand to the rest of the class and tried his best to look 'cool'.

and implicitly here:

When the bell rang Jackie went out to his old Pontiac, pressed play on the CD player and listened to his new Mars Volta CD as he sat on the hood of the car and smoked a cigarette.

On to thread #2:

Good scene-setting/description; something I think folks could always use more of. Also a very nice twist in the following chunk:

"Well," Jackie shrugged and fidgited, he needed a cigarette, but he never smoked around his mom. She was trying to quit, he wasn't.

The initial expectation (Jackie doesn't smoke around his mom because she'd disapprove) is undercut by the revelation that it's actually a courtesy as she's trying to quit. That's great because that little detail says a lot more about the relationship between the two, in a subtle way, than a whole load of exposition might.

Jackie's interaction with Tanesha is pretty solidly-handled on his end, but I think this is a good time to pull out and discuss some problematic elements on both sides. A quirk of early version, from all I've seen, is that often characters are given a few traits to define them and take a while to grow out of those traits (if they ever do). Jackie's profile repeatedly lets us know that his appearance is "feminine" and includes the line "Jackie is the epitome of metro, and he’s proud of it." The profile made me a little bit worried Jackie might be cast as a stereotype, but even in it he's treated with a decent amount of empathy, and this persists in his actual threads; his profile is blunt and awkward in a lot of ways, but I have very much been there myself and the intentions seem good throughout.

By contrast, Tanesha bothers me a good deal, and while I'm not going to get too sidetracked by her and am gonna try to keep stuff mostly Jackie-related here, I think a big part of it is the frequency with which Tanesha's narrative sees fit to remind the reader that she's a. black and b. fat. This often shows up in tagging her as "The black girl..." in narrative, as in "Perhaps one day it would occur to the heavy-set black girl that regardless of what she was eating, having two to three servings of it during each meal period wasn't doing her weight any favors." or "Despite the thoughts racing through her mind, the black girl tried to keep it cool as she casually approached the new boy." or "If Jackie Kovacs wasn't careful, he might wind up with the heavy-set black girl forming yet another borderline-obsessive crush -- this time on him." This is something that drove me crazy even in V4 with less charged stuff ("The wily young redhead," "The Johnson girl," to invent examples because I'm too lazy to dig them up) and I think a big part of it has to do with where the narrative sits with regards to a character. Are they thinking of themselves in these terms, at these moments? Almost certainly not. These are, then, intrusions of the authorial voice, which are always a risk. When these intrusions are categorizing a character unflatteringly and constantly bringing up their race, especially with a character who is a good bit more caricature than the handler's norm, that's frustrating.

Back to Jackie:

Emphasis mine wrote: "Oh, I go to Hobbsborough," Jackie was slow to reply. "I haven't been to school yet though, 'cause there was some sort of accident there. I'm pretty nervious, I geuss. I don't really know anybody that goes to Hobbsborough."

Another really good line here—Nealosi quietly turns a cliché or stock phrase (quick to reply) on its head to subtly indicate Jackie's discomfort with the situation. Better, we see soon that Jackie feels self-conscious about his own situation, not Tanesha's behavior—his handler keeps separate what he knows (Tanesha's forming a weird obsessive crush) from what Jackie knows (She's said hello and seems friendly). I sort of feel like Jackie is crediting Tanesha with greater complexity than her own narrative is.

That said: gripe. One of Jackie's posts rapid-fires oodles of dialogue in a way that's still common and still irksome to me as a reader. The problem with this is it either leaves the other handler to reply to each item in sequence (either by reframing the narrative to slip in the responses as they go, which leaves the first character unable to reply without sending the whole scene spiraling down a paradoxical hole of conditionals and retcons or by doing it list-style which is something certain real people do but is very very rare and weird in my experience) or to just ignore most of it and go with whatever was said last (in which case why did we need the awkward spew of questions to begin with?). I think the best choice in these situations, honestly, is to keep dialogue shorter or to collaborate with your thread partner to GM some natural flow into things. Oh, and for the record, in this case the handlers go the conditional route so effectively the characters are simultaneously having conversations about the Infamous Pregame Murder, Tanesha's boy image issues, and playing xylophone in the band, all of which have markedly different tones.

Jackie's third thread is interesting because it's his first thread rewritten (presumably due to the loss of the V1 boards at the time) and it's actually way more detailed and subtle. This is very cool, since even though his first thread wasn't bad by any means we're still treated to a really rare and direct look at a handler's improvement. It's only been a month, but Nelaosi seems to be better grasping subtlety and detail. Also, someone actually replies his time.

Unfortunately, there seems to be a slight communication error in that Jackie's post follows his introduction to the class through the period and ends with him smoking in the parking lot, but newcomer Kayla Ravoy's post ends still in class, leaving no clean possibility for interaction and a somewhat awkward scene-setting. Nealosi's next post, however, brings some (presumably approved) GMing into play to resolve the situation—time is advanced, and Jackie has a hallway collision with Kayla on his way back in. It's a good solution to a difficult situation, though there's again some awkwardness in Kayla's reaction—she introduces herself and immediately leaves the thread. Jackie goes to class thinking maybe he'll talk with folks, but nobody bites so the thread ends. All in all, this thread does good stuff for Jackie but only really for him. That's okay, though.

We move right along to a one-shot; Nealosi apologizes for the length but its not excessive at all (800 words, roughly). The bulk of it is a flashback dealing with Jackie's strained relationship with his father. It's solid stuff—restrained by V2 standards (though I have a few quibbles; I'd like to know how old Jackie was since that's not clearly signaled and it plays out very differently if he's 15 or if he's 11, and I also am wondering why he lets his father inside in the first place [though that's perhaps excusable since nothing particularly dramatic happens—maybe this is a routine of sorts for them]), but still dramatic and traumatic in its own way. Jackie also has a moment with an old man here, and again there's something restrained about it, in a good way. Better, Jackie's baggage informs but does not define who he is. Good stuff.

Jackie's next thread is somewhat awkwardly-placed in that it asserts it is on the same day as Thread #3 but is clearly not on the same day as Thread #4—I'd thus suggest the following reading order/accepted canon sequence for Jackie's threads:
[ol]
[li]It's A Fixer-Upper—this thread comes first in Jackie's story no matter how you cut it, since it's before he's started at school.[/li]
[li]That New Guy—this can actually be skipped with nothing lost as far as events go, but is an interesting note when it comes to the evolution of Nealosi's writing, especially when followed by...[/li]
[li]Mrs. Laney's Homeroom—the same thread as "That New Guy," but better. Jackie's first day of school.[/li]
[li]Hallway Encounter—explicitly set later in the same day, this follows directly from Jackie's encounter with Kayla.[/li]
[li]Long Walks—this could go second, honestly, but it feels like a closing note for Jackie's Pregame story and was written after "Homeroom" so I like it last.[/li]
[/ol]
Anyways, this thread opens with a brewing fight as Kayla falsely(!) accuses Felix Travertil of rape. Jackie stumbles into the aftermath but doesn't actually hear what's going down, and tries to intervene but in a way that's a bit awkward. I give props for Jackie's grounded reaction, though I wish a bit more time was spent in his head regarding his decision and I think that the execution could be a bit smoother even if following roughly the same process.

Jackie is sympathetic and considerate as he listens to Kayla, but at the same time is willing to consider that there's been a misunderstanding (especially given that he did not in fact hear the accusation and Kayla declines to repeat it to him). Jackie catches up with Felix and they briefly chat, and Felix has an odd moment of manipulation ("Even after he got his apology out, Felix kept their eyes locked, Felix trying to get the measure of him, to see the best way to make Jackie play into his hands.")

In this scene, Jackie is, as in much of Pregame, the grounded one. I said it in chat but I think it bears repeating: aside from a few minor bumps, Jackie could be slotted into just about any Pregame and while he might not always be a standout, I don't think he'd cause major offense, either. I like him a good bit coming out of Pregame, and I'm curious to see where the island takes him.

---

The answer, at first, is The Mountain Ranch. I'm not a huge fan of it when a handler's characters are joined at the hip, and Jackie appears to be heading this way with regards to Gail Smith. I actually do think the pair falls into one of the biggest traps of this arrangement right off the bat, though Jackie comes off the better of the two; Gail is initially paralyzed by fear and is thus shunted off to the side as Jackie handles the bulk of the interactions with the newly-arrived Ricky Callahan. As such things go, it's not that bad, really; there are a few slightly awkward moments of indirect characterization, but neither character rings false due to it.

A bunch of other characters roll into the thread, in a very early-game sort of way, and I do have a bit of a Passive GMing quibble because one of Ricky's posts reframes events such that he speaks up first to one of those newcomers despite this info coming several posts after Jackie's own greeting—it just emphasizes, again, the importance of communicating and coming to understanding regarding timing in this sort of situation.

Aside from this, mostly what happens is everyone leaves together, excepting Gregory Moyer who was just watching from the woods and rather astutely muses that this was perhaps not the best choice of manners to try to find allies.

I do have a little gripe that I guess goes here because it's been coming up throughout but is really emphasized by Gail's presence, and that's that there's a sort of weird gender dynamics theme at play that's not really totally considered. To be fair, the narrative seems to be pushing against reductive stereotypes (Jackie is in fact directly aware of them to at least some degree) but at the same time I feel like in pushing against archetypes they're sometimes a bit oversold—we get a "Jackie wasn't like the other boys!" moment but Ricky really isn't either, and even John doesn't seem to be that much like what so many of the characters appear to think guys are like. This is a very early-version quirk that I think is to a degree influenced by the greater prevalence of inserts, and its certainly not unrealistic for high schoolers to be lacking in nuanced understanding, but it still feels just a little odd.

Anyways, onwards! The fearsome four arrive at The Expressway, and I take a moment to note that I both love and hate V2's island. On the one hand, it's ridiculously evocative—this whole crazy city that's been abandoned. It's thematically unified and distinct in a way that wasn't recaptured until V6, and that's really cool. On the other hand, the sense of scale is way out of whack and the island itself makes no sense in the universe's metaplot. As described, it comes off as impossibly large, and given the small student population that there are as many meetings as there are feels somewhat improbable. It also runs into the easy-to-identify issue more than V1's small settlement or V3' abandoned army base—I'd even say it compares unfavorably to V4's logging operation. It's one of those slight continuity warts that has to be glossed over to some extent, and while I don't hate that completely it is disruptive to verisimilitude.

The thread itself starts off pretty strong, establishing the working relationship formed by the group and leaving some things to summary that don't need to be explored in exhaustive detail (such as their small talk while traveling). Ricky is, by this point, starting to take center stage—I think a lot of this is due to the Jackie/Gail juggling act, which prevents either from getting quite as much focus as they deserve. There are a few OOC intrusions that are pretty disruptive to flow, but that's par for the course.

Jackie is, once again, the grounded one, and he has a good moment for the discussion of heroism in SOTF—he decides to himself that he's willing to fight in defense of his friends, but also can't imagine killing. He's trying to walk that narrow line, being proactive and not just rolling over, but at the same time keeping himself distinct from the players. I also like that the characters get a little room to talk about their hopes and dreams, especially handled in as conscious a fashion as it is. Jackie scores points for being the one without anything particularly dramatic or secret. He's pretty much just a dude, in the best way.

A pleasant surprise as the thread continues, and what dominates its closing posts, is John and Gail coming out of their shells more. Gail admits to various medical ailments, including hemophilia, and John drops his defenses a bit and comes off as a lot more normal. Unfortunately, Jackie gets sidelined by that a bit, though I suppose he's had his focus earlier in the scene. In any event, the group soon moves to the residential district, and to Jackie's final thread.

This thread starts with a long bit between just Ricky and Kayla, which I'm not gonna get into a ton except to note one little pet peeve in Ricky's dialogue that recurs a bunch—at the ends of his posts, he tends to refer to students whose names he doesn't know as stuff like "the girl he might soon come to know as Kayla Ravoy," which is distracting because it highlights what he doesn't know and at the same time provides no grammatical benefit because he's already made it through the whole post with just pronouns anyways.

Nitpick here:

“Um,” Jackie looked around awkwardly, remembering how awkward he got in conversation with women.

Jackie really doesn't feel awkward with women at any point prior to this in his story.

Anyways, Felix arrives on the scene, but tries to back out when he realizes Kayla is there. Ricky takes off to keep searching houses, with some ominous narration about how he'll be gone just long enough for stuff to get bad. I like that Felix tries to disengage, though he's again somewhat oddly malicious in his thoughts—he doesn't really expect to have any problems killing. Jackie is once again the normal one, trying to engage Felix in conversation and scope him out but also unwilling to drop his guard. In fact, it's established that Kayla has pretty much convinced herself of the truth of her false rape accusations, and has also told them to Jackie, but Jackie is concerned first and foremost with survival and is intent on heading off any trouble that may explode. He tries to usher Kayla and Gail away, again playing peacemaker and bastion of common sense.

Unfortunately, the confrontation explodes, due in part to all sides beating around the bush and in part to Kayla and Felix being far too casual with Kayla's weapon (a boomerang). Felix comes off as effortless, smug, and like he really might be dangerous, especially when he privately muses that if Kayla doesn't stop spreading her false accusation he might have to silence her. I really, really wish the weapon in play wasn't a boomerang, though, as it's both slightly awkward that Felix has intimate technical knowledge of boomerangs and that the weapon in question is pretty steadfastly non-lethal in normal circumstances. With something a bit less exotic, I think it could be a really great moment, but the boomerang leaves it a bit of an oversell in my opinion.

Jackie moves to intercede, but trips and tries to catch himself, poking Felix with his knife in the process. I'm not a huge fan of this turn because it removes all responsibility for the escalation from both characters, and a lot of the best drama comes from characters compromising their morals. There are a lot of other factors in the scene that could set off one or both characters—Kayla's screaming bloody murder, Gail runs off without a word, John is behind Felix boxing him in—so I don't really think it had to be an accident that escalates it all.

The actual fight sees Jackie's narrative turning a lot more flowery, though I prefer his more unadorned style. Fights don't seem to be Nealosi's point of comfort—in Felix's post, he kicks Jackie twice in the head, but Jackie's post doesn't really get explicit about this, though his narrative seems a bit concussed; I think just one or two lines selling that hit would've done wonders. Felix presses the assault, but again there's a bit of a missed beat, though one I'm willing to accept as a character moment for Felix; Felix suggests that Jackie's making a mistake in putting himself on the line for Kayla, but then attacks him before he has any chance to actually consider the point.

John runs up to stand by Jackie, which is an odd bit of choreography but hey, fights are confusing. Jackie's narrative is still in poetic mode, and he's trying to pull a Gandalf, and that's a good moment in some ways because Felix isn't actually at all interested in chasing Kayla and Gail. It's a little tragedy of misunderstanding, and those are some of the best material in SOTF.

Felix's handler is clearly the fight guy in this scene, though I'm not totally down with Felix literally flipping over his opponents given that he was hobbling around on crutches two months ago, unable to even take one hand off them without risking toppling. It's at least pretty well explained, though, and that it by and large sounds somewhat reasonable deserves credit. I think the big issue, though, is that Felix isn't really willing to take any hits, and while I'd never suggest that taking hits is required for a kill, I do think it's important for a drawn out slugfest of a brawl where everyone's doing their best to mess each other up. Put another way, if the narrative intent was for Felix to cleanly dismantle his foes, it would've been better served were the other two written to the same effect; instead it feels like they're trying to give something back and just getting stonewalled in a fashion that doesn't gel with the scene or their narratives.

Felix stabs Jackie with the lost knife (which I'm really glad to see come back into play; I'd been wondering about it) and Jackie realizes he's dying with a nice callback to Pregame and a linguistic flourish that actually does land really well: "...the loss wasn’t worth the world. The world was worth the loss." Jackie throughout has been begging John to flee, but John's ignoring it and Felix actually isn't interested in fighting so he leaves. John, still ignoring Jackie's pleas to flee, instead chases after Felix, and the wiki tells me that doesn't go so well for him.

The rain falls, and Jackie's feeling almost peaceful, mostly because he's addled by blood loss—huge points for noting that. Rain falls, and Gail returns, but can't do anything for Jackie as he passes away.

So all in all, how is Jackie? He's good! Aside from a few quirks, I think he could be ported to any version of SOTF and be at least a solid character, and I think there were seeds of real greatness that were just kept from taking root by a few choices common to the era. Specifically, I think pairing Jackie and Gail was a mistake for all the usual reasons, and I also think there was this idea that a character had to be a big action star to be interesting—or at least, that's what I get from this on the wiki:

Jackie was originally intended to be my main flagship, but after realizing how static he was on the island and how his personal philosophy and approach would never change I wanted him dead. Plus, I really didn't enjoy writing for the sentimental-artsy-fartsy kid. – Nealosi

I actually really disagree with the static comment, because while Jackie stays true to his morals, we do see him evolve bit by bit. At the end of the day, though, everyone's on SOTF to have fun, and I'm sorry to hear Jackie wasn't much fun to write. He was, on the other hand, fun to read, and I'd definitely recommend him to those interested in delving into V2.

Hoo boy.

[+] Nich Finlayson

First off, I believe I mentioned this in chat, but I am not a fan of the majority of V2 profiles that I've seen. The profiles in V1 had their own issues, such as lack of pertinent information and the unrealistic/unsavoury details that were contained within them, but the v2 profiles contained both that and a style that I can only describe as 'faux-badass.' It's like the tone suitable for the 'Conclusions' section is used for the entirety of the profile, or like the character themselves wrote the profile, which... really doesn't work.

Nich's profile is a prime example of why I don't like this at all. Nich is, by all accounts, an unpleasant chap; he's an angry drunk, he's belligerent, desperately wishes for a zombie apocalypse, and worst of all, attempts to sexually assault girls, apparently successfully on two occasions. Yet the profile suggests he's a cool skater bro, rebelling against authority, who you'd love to have as your friend, who somehow hasn't been expelled despite being caught smoking weed four times. The writing itself is very solid, but the tone and contents of the profile aren't putting me in a good mood; describing a rapist in such a jaunty, buddy-buddy style does not gel well with me at all.

Oh, and his parents also aren't given names. For shame.

Nich has three pregame threads, the first of which features him and Andrew Swainson smoking weed (because they're stoners, did you get that they're stoners yet, has the profile hit you over the head with the fact that they're stoners enough yet) and leaving in a single post, and the second of which got eaten up by a crash.

The third involves him, still with Andrew, meeting up with Zed Foreman at the skatepark (along with characters called Sarah and 'Zero' who have a total of three posts between them before they never appear again). It should be noted that both Nich and Andrew are written by Cycokiller, which makes their shared posts less than user friendly. The style of writing is almost identical to that of Nich's profile; here, it works (for the most part), combining the worldview of a guy who thinks he's hot shit with a slightly exasperated narrative voice. He slaps the shit out of Zed (which is apparently a regular occurance), skates a bit, then sets up some sort of skating contest with Andrew and Zed. The writing is, again, solid, and I feel it could easily be rewritten to bring it up to modern SOTF standards. The most predominant problem is that the thread relies on the reader knowing a LOT of skater lingo, which I do not. I had to look up what 'acid drop' means, just to make sure that they weren't doing LSD whilst skateboarding (which honestly wouldn't have surprised me). Having to constantly check what certain terms and words meant really kinda took me out of the whole scene. My main issue, howeve, remains the fact that there's still a disconnect between Nich's actions and how Nich's described; I'm still not certain whether I'm supposed to like the guy or not. He kinda flits between a guy with a sorely inflated ego, and a legitimately chummy guy, and whilst the narrative voice has a hint of 'for fuck's sake nich,' it probably needed to be a little bit stronger, more 'Nich is kinda an asshat' than 'mild exasperation.'

Also he can apparently eat four pizzas in one sitting, which should really be listed in his Advantages, imo.

Now we get to his on-island stuff.

Nich's first thread is a oneshot, in which he wakes up in an open grave. He considers looking for Andrew and Zed, briefly pausing when he considers they might be planning on playing, before eventually deciding to search for his two best buddies but keeping his guard up around them - this I like. He then decides, in the space of a couple of sentences, that he'll happily chop up anyone he doesn't consider a friend - this I like less. The narration says it was 'quite a dilemma' but I sure don't feel it; show, don't tell, and all that. After a bizarre moment where Nich momentarily forgets that churches have cemetaries or something, he heads off into the woods to find his friends. So far, so average. The next thread, however, as a 'CONTENT WARNING' label attached to the title, so I'm immediately filled with fear.

Fortunately, Nich joins the thread after the actual Bad Stuff has happened. Unfortunately, curiosity led me to scroll up and read about Zed getting his dick chomped anyway. So that was fun. Nich, once again, mixes the rough with the smooth in his posts. I'm not a fan of characters who are established to be best friends/siblings/dating to meet up in their very first thread, but I like Nich's train of logic here, that 'civilization means safety, wilderness means danger' and that although the screams he hears could belong to anybody, Andrew and Zed fall into that category of 'anybody.' I also like his interactions with Satoru; he scares the boy away and then hesitates when given the chance to slice his head off. Nich obviously wants to make Satoru pay for stabbing his friend in the arm, but isn't able to work himself up to actual murder. It's neat, and makes me wish his decision in the grave had been given as much thought. Satoru, shockingly enough, doesn't take well to being wounded, and the two end up fighting, which ends with Nich desperately leaping out of the way to avoid being stabbed in the dick. Why is there so much dick mutilation this version? Is that really your biggest priority? Stabbing schlongs and chopping off cocks? Describing a penis as 'ladykiller' is probably my least favourite euphemism for the dong I've seen, worse even than 'expired sausage' from the same thread. Nich asks Zed a rather silly question (yes, Nich, the guy bleeding from his crotch is totally fine), but shows a nice level of balance between concern for his friend and desire to move somewhere else in case any players heard the commotion. His decision to keep on helping Zed even if it would be a detriment to his own survival chances and his constant self doubts whenever he tries to think any further than 'find Zed and Andrew' are particularly well done, and I'm finding myself enjoying Nich quite a bit.

After a kinda nothing thread, where Nich falls in the river he's trying to cross and everyone laughs at him, he heads towards the hotel. Somehow, they struggle to find it, which I don't quite buy. This thread, unfortunately, has Nich reunite with Andrew. They're still both being written by Cyco, and at first he chooses to seperate their actions with triple-tilde line breaks, but as soon as Andrew gets out of the sewer and starts to talk with Nich, this has to be dropped as they launch into a conversation that kinda excludes poor Zed pretty hardcore. There's a smattering of good stuff in this thread (Nich trusting that Andrew is who he says he is in comparison to Zed's paranoia, for instance), but the OOC decisions for two characters handled by the same person to meet up, and for Nich to group up with his two best friends before anybody else, just make me kinda grumpy. I'm hoping that Nich and Andrew seperate somewhat soonish.

The trio finally makes it to the hotel, where they encounter the body of (I think) Marvin Hendrick. Nich remains the calm, rational force amongst the three, bouncing very nicely off of Zed's panicky nature and Andrew's... blandness. Whilst Zed's busy puking, he tries to find a place for them to hold up in, grabbing as many keys as he can from the reception desk. It's a decision that he himself admits is only half-baked, but that seems to be a consistent theme with Nich. He has the bare bones of ideas but nothing more than that. He feels like taking the keys is a good plan, but he's not totally certain why. He wants to punish Satoru for hurting his friend, but doesn't think about the repurcussions of attacking him. It's a theme I enjoy, and it's cool to see it carries on throughout Nich's story.

Nich and the others hole up in one of the hotel rooms, Nich taking watch first, unwilling to help bandage up Zed's penis. What are bros for, if not that? Some time passes before Nich hears screaming and then gunshots. Again, he has the beginnings of a plan. He wakes Zed and Andrew up, and tells them they need to do something. Again, the plan falls short, because he doesn't know what that something is. He's doing his best, at least.

I skip over the shitty 'yaoi' stuff between Andrew and Zed because fuck that.

There's also a completely pointless note that Nich hasn't had sex for ages and was planning on trying to get with someone on the plane, slap bang in the middle of what should be a tense scene. They're stuck in a hotel room, huddled against the door, listening out for any sounds that the shooter is still around, ready to bolt and split up if that happens. This one paragraph feels like a bucket of water being thrown on a lit fuse. Nich then decides they can't just stay like this forever, and heads out to deal with whatever's going on himself. It's a poor decision, obviously; he knows there's someone nearby with a gun, and all he has is a handaxe and a wounded arm. But for a guy like Nich with a massive ego and an inability to think things through? I don't doubt for a second that he'd do something like this.

Now on to the final thread, and...

Oh.

Well, that explains the 'Nich hasn't had sex' paragraph in the previous thread. He runs into Mariavel in the corridor, and his immediate decision upon seeing her is that he's going to try and rape her. He ignores the fact that Mariavel is literally fucking trying to kill him in order to do so. She throws him off, shoves him down the stairs and slashes him to pieces. Good riddance.

I'm really fucking disappointed. I was all set to recommend Nich. His profile needed a major overhaul, but if he'd been played off as a guy with a massive ego but with nowhere near the capability to pull off anything he says, then I think he could have become really solid. That's not what we got. We got lovingly described sexual assult, instead. We got a guy who doesn't think that getting girls drunk and feeling them up is rape. I skimmed over Nich's final thread as soon as I realised what was going on, because, Christ, I feel like I'm Charlie Brown and someone's just pulled the football away from me.

Fuck.

Song version of a writeup. Here you are, Ohm. HOST NOTE: Naft and Ohm traded on the condition that Naft write his review in song form

[+] Lyrics

The RAT is always greener,
When reading someone else’s kid,
Marimar dreamed about stopping evil,
Instead she wound up stopping jack shit,
Should have learned what had happened,
Around on the island floor,
Now she wound up inactive killed in,
Mariavel’s revolving fodder door,

Thank you dear Ohm,
Thank you dear Ohm,
I could be reading,
A dude’s love of pot seeding,
Instead of a Mermaid’s tome,
Despite the draining narrative conceit,
I confess near the end I found it quite neat,
Despite all the errors,
And lack of proofreading care,
Thank you dear Ohm

Marimar’s mind was broken,
When she woke from her gasseous sleep,
She decided the island had transformed,
Into an ocean so deep,
Her narrative is singly peppered,
With King Triton, mermaids and eels,
She’s treated as kind of a leper,
Her interaction’s dry and sealed

Thank you dear Ohm,
Thank you dear Ohm,
Marimar’s real bad,
This trade made me so sad,
But now I am done,
Though you got the better kid,
You still have to read and write about it,
So I’ll take this comfort,
Suck on my trumpet,
Thank you dear Ohm.

An Linh Tuan.

An Linh's pregame consists of the infamous murder mystery thread, which as we all know by now survives only as fragments directly concerning Maggie Heartgreeder copy+pasted into one monolithic pile of text. It's a bit hard to follow and features a few formatting gems like  

×òî æå, ñïðàøèâàåòñÿ, ïðîäîëæàåòñÿ â ýòîì ãîðîäå? Àìåðèêà ÿâëÿåòñÿ íàñòîëüêî ñóìàñøåäøåé èíîãäà. Åñëè êòî - òî óìåð, òî, ãäå - ïîëèöèÿ, è ïî÷åìó - âñå ìû âñå åùå â øêîëå?

Ïðîêëÿòûé, ÿ õî÷ó åñòü.

Anyways, a girl has been murdered in the bathroom and some kids take it upon themselves to form a plucky detective squad, complete with designated sidekick. An Linh is not the first thread of this crazy tapestry we've examined, so you can be assured I am not making this up. As to her actual involvement... from what survives, she volunteers for interrogation and tries to drag the girl who happens to be the actual killer in with her on account of Very Bad Feelings. I'm sure this bit of intuition is not colored at all by any OOC knowledge. Though to be fair, Mai seems like she'd be pretty high on the list of suspects anyways.

She doesn't head off right away though, and in the meantime a fight apparently breaks out, and An Linh jumps in to break it up. She's very athletic and proficient in some form of martial arts I've never heard of (but which Google confirms is real) so we're probably missing out on some nice detail from the lost posts. This also seems to feature a yardstick swordfight and a resounding ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ from the homeroom teacher. Her next surviving post is her relaxing all bored at her desk, so I guess some events transpired in the meantime. She then does this



which is her most enduring legacy. My prior v2 pregame knowledge consisted mostly of the facts that someone was murdered and that someone kicked a door off its hinges, and here they are together in one thread. And then she disappears. She shows up at her destination, where Mai is already being interrogated, and then the esteemed self-appointed school detective asks a question and the thread just ends. To quote the homeroom teacher, ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

So, onto the game proper. An Linh wakes up and the first thing she does (after some reminiscing about the prologue) is tackle the shotgun-wielding BOXING CHAMPION OF THE WORLD, because the first thing he did was stick said shotgun down someone's throat and pull the trigger, and she's not about that. It's a decent fight scene, if a little stilted. She axe kicks him in the shoulder, which is impractical and also very cool, and follows it up with a roundhouse, which is slightly more practical and almost as cool. Hits go back and forth and there's a bit of a break after she employs some POCKET SAND (technically ground dirt) and they both go running for their weapons. She fishes her assigned brass knuckles out of her bag and knocks him over with a hook to the head, at which point it all sort of fizzles out as he decides he's too far away to use his shotgun and wanders off.

People just sort of pile in after that. A lurking girl falls out of the bush and pulls a MAC-10 out of her bag. An unarmed boy walks up, and bush girl weighs the danger of brass knucles and extreme martial arts prowess vs a Y chromosome and wisely turns her gun on the boy. There's a bit of a standoff with yet another kid wandering in and running off in the meantime. And then she disappears. The thread continues, technically. But no more posts come from any one of the three already present. A 12-year-old prodigy wanders in, takes a couple pages of notes on how good of an alliance he could form, then jots down another page about how nevermind it would actually suck and wanders off. Someone runs through the thread, entering and exiting in the same post. A girl with delusions of mermaid-dom comes in and impales the boy with a machete, and then wanders off.

An Linh resurfaces several months of OOC time later, massively drunk and giggling at the announcements. The characterization is a pretty stark departure from what we've seen previously, which is hard to fault too much because it's an inactive kill. Her previous firey grit and determination is gone, and the only thing she can bring herself to care about is finishing the bottle of spiced rum she found somewhere. A boy walks in and starts messing with his collar, and then they spend some quality time getting drunk and messing with collars and having sex. It's actually a pretty human scene, how I imagine a couple teens with spirits both dampened and spiced might act. And then she's informed at grenade laucherpoint that her slampiece is using a fake name to hide his prior murder. She jumps him in response and then he pushes her through a store window and she bleeds to death. The setup is a bit inconsistent, but it does highlight the very real dangers of being pushed through a store window, so there is that.

Overall, not bad but not someone I'd jump to recommend. The difference between her initial characterization and the inactive kill shows that there's something there, but she's not a supporting character and there's not much meat to what she does in the spotlight. The inactive kill is mostly good but not really her.

I had really high hopes for Damien, really I did. Even with everyone warning me about what was to come, I still had hope, and that hope was entirely misplaced, because while the writing skill for Damien was technically good, he is perhaps one of the most shockingly bad characters I've ever seen on SOTF. There's characters in v2 like [insert Bukowski character here] who are just overtly bad and it really hits you in the face with it, but Damien's badness is a stealth bad. It's not a bad from a lack of skill, it's a bad because of misplaced intentions. You don't know what kind of ride you're in for until you're already halfway through and it's too late to jump out because the car's moving at 80mph already and you don't stop until it wants you to stop.

PREGAME

The tragedy here is he didn't have to be this bad. The writing in pregame was, for the time, actually rather good. Laz was good at setting a scene, getting a good look into Damien's head and the way he interacts with people, and we even get a good look at Damien's mother Nicole (who, as chat will have you know, is probably the best parental figure in v2 alongside CJ the Hook-Handed janitor), and he even had some interesting interactions with some very v2 characters e.g. a girl who stabbed someone's throat in the middle of a classroom fight, and some random who offered to skip school with him because he was bored. There's hints as to what Damien will become, what with the intense focus on the bullying he receives, what his mother does to help him, and the delusions he will go through both IC and OOC that end up defining him.

1
And for about 90% of his first v2 game thread, the good writing continues. I'd say apart from a few technical niggles (that's not how blood pressure works Laz, that's not how any of it works), it's pretty much one of the best written introductions for a character you can get on SOTF...until the last bit, where suddenly he's got a voice speaking to him in his head, implied to be his dearly departed father or the devil or something? But I press onward, because I'm desperate to see if this will end up interesting. I STILL HAD HOPE.

2

He runs into throat-stabby girl Kristey at the Pagoda as well as everyone's favourite gay Peter Rosenthal where they agree to team up with him. He's nervous about this because he, despite how half his threads had random NPCs being nice to him, was still not used to people being nice to him. Turns out his fears are founded, however, since Kristey takes Peter aside to be all "k so we kill Damien if he becomes a problem right?" and then Damien hears that and this is where he gets the excuse to run into the plot that Laz wanted all along: Damien Takes Revenge On The Popular People Who Wronged Him, and he was going to run through with this plot regardless of whatever happened to him, and that's a no-no when you're in a collaborative RP. Half of the people who've been mean to Damien so far have been his own other characters/NPCs so it feels really self-contained to go through with something like this. Anyways, he dramatically writes a Death List even with potential allies/list members like 5 feet away, Kristey discovers him, tells him to fuck off, and fuck off he does.

3/4

He fucks off to some random garden where he meets up with Eli McConnell and they bro down for a while until Eli goes inactive and Damien kills him in a needlessly gory way for cool points, because you gotta have the Revenge storyline get its start somehow and plain killings are for loser non-main character kids, not Damien. It's at this point where Damien pretty much starts blaming his mother for everything that's happened, and to Laz's credit it's pretty much framed half and half Damien being crazy and Nicole /actually/ being an evil matriarch from hell, so when Damien starts blaming Nicole for kidnapping everyone I think it's /supposed/ to come off sort of crazy? But then it's intercut with scenes of Nicole's co-workers blaming her for her son killing so idk, shrug.

5

Damien meets back up with Kristey who notices he's begun his revenge plot and proceed to read him into the ground for being no better than the people he torments, which was fun, but then he just kills her so womp-womp. All throughout this is still being framed as everyone else being wrong and Damien being The Chosen One, so idk. I'm beginning to think the namechoice was less than subtle.

6
So Damien wins best kill award and gets to share the glory with Huy which is like 10% funny because he blames Nicole for this and 90% ":/" because he then turns racist out of nowhere, calling Huy/Sonia the Viet Cong and other delightful turns of phrase. I didn't know SOTF writers made tenure.

7
He then has an entire scene in the middle of a Paris/Garry fight scene where he dresses up as Sailor Mars and of course I'm rolling my eyes but I actually hate both the other characters just as much so it's a slight reprieve I guess. He then teams up with Garry Dodd in order to go hunt down Paris because Cartoon Recognizes Cartoon. I then pull out a bottle of duty-free mandarin vodka I had stored in my fridge that I hadn't opened because I am literally not getting paid enough to read a single thread that has both Garry Dodd and Damien Carter-Madison in it, let alone two.

8
In my hangover-induced state I see to remember them finding Paris's suicided body and Garry cuts his head off because he's Garry Dodd, and Damien decides to kill Garry because broken clocks are right twice a day. Garry's exit post contains lyrics to a Boney M song because nothing is sacred.

9
Damien chases Garry down and dramatically shoots him off the cliff, so we're officially down to one self-important narcissist in a scene instead of two. This is good only because I am glad Garry Dodd is dead. This is bad because we have to listen to the same self-serving narrative about Damien Taking Revenge repeated for the tenth time, and bolstering Damien's hundreds of NPC characters including his v3 flagship. We get it Laz, Damien is the main character of v2 (on the plus side, we find out what Nicole's up to this post - she's sleeping).

10
Damien then enters a thread where Nealosi kills a bunch of his own characters I think? idk I'm only contracted for reading Damien. He then engages in one of the only parts of his entire story where he acknowledges another character's actions besides his own when he connects both Kristey and Garry calling him weak as they die, which is both factual and correct. Anyways, he meets Franco and the two have history which was apparently Damien getting the crap beaten out of him at the party in his last pregame thread which, surprise, he blames Nicole for! Franco is OTT in a bad way but doesn't treat himself as though he's the main character so I guess I like him slightly more than Damien. I love grading on this scale. This also happens:

He reflexively put a hand to his face as Franco recoiled into a large unit of industrial machinery, and immediately felt something slippery and smelled and then tasted something quite rusty. As soon as his taste buds felt it, he forced a smile and licked his chops.

"Tasssty...."

He'd tasted his own blood, trickling from a fairly busted nose. Not that he had too much time to savor every drop.

we get it Laz Damien is Evil. their fight is cut short when Mitsuko2 kills three of Nealosi's characters in a hilariously short inactivekill post which also robs Damien of the chance to gloat over more kills so thanks Mitsuko2.

11/12
Damien's next two threads are threads where he once again gets to pimp out Damien by culling inactives at his alter and these are neither interesting scenes, scenes which develop Damien's character in any meaningful way, or even scenes that are worth recapping because you already know the drill at this point. Damien Is Evil, Damien Is Crazy, Damien Blames Nicole, Damien Has Gotten His Revenge.

13/FINISH
His penultimate thread is an extended battle sequence between Damien and Mariavel that is notable in that Megami actually comes in to tell them they're taking too long and they're delaying endgame, so Mariavel gets a mortal wound in for Damien before skulking off to go take part in the saddest SOTF thread ever written, while Damien goes and dies alone on a park bench while Nicole considers disowning him. Fair decision I'd say.

*

The one word I can use to describe Damien is "selfish". His narrative has no consideration for any other character but Damien and Damien's hundreds of NPCs, many of whom are culled at his feet to raise his profile (the number of characters not written by Damien who get killed by him? 2). Damien's story itself is, in spite of the technically good writing, shockingly bad and immature and deployed for shock value almost just as much as any of Bukowski's characters. Half of anything that happened in Damien's story would have had him laughed out of v3, let alone v4 and beyond, and I'm pretty sure if you asked Laz as he wrote this he would be unaware that anything else happened in v2 besides Damien Carter-Madison. A cursory glance of the v2 era wiki pretty much has him cheering on Bryan to win v2 because Mariavel killed Damien. It's that kind of character.

I've always been a bolster of v1-3 as products of their times and something that should be judged accordingly, but no amount of nostalgia goggles will filter out just how insultingly bad Damien is. I hesitate to call anyone the worst character of a version or the worst character of all time but if I was to make such a decision, Damien would be up there for just how bad he was and how badly he was deployed. There was hope at the beginning, but it was dashed against the rocks by the end of his second in-game thread. He's nothing but revenge fantasy disguised as an SOTF character and is not worth reading even one post of.

Avoid like the fucking plague.

#NicoleForParentOfTheYear #NicoleDidNothingWrong

Thank you for the song Naft, it touched my darkened, cynical heart in a way only Marimar could.

Brief history on Nathan. He's a thin, balding drug addict whose hobbies include Marijuana, fighting and alcohol who gradually eroded away all his other hobbies for his vices and drove his friends and family away. A story of a fall that could go a few ways in the game. Let's see how it goes.

Nathan doesn't do much in his first thread as he shows up at the third page long after all the action happened and everyone but Franco and Russ had left. At this point Franco for some reason ropes this guy into an alliance. Nathan goes along with it because Franco has a gun and he don't. He also keeps calling him a fag so that docks him points in my book.

Either way they continue onwards to his second thread which is more mundane, just him and Franco moving to their next location while having a small talk, while at the same time building up a mutual distrust between the two which begs the question of why Franco took this guy with him in the first place? Easy Kill? Your guess is as good as mine.

Either way a few problems become apparent with this thread. Nathan's posts are riddled with typos and writing mistakes throughout that become distracting, it's also here I notice that all of Franco's stuff is more interesting to read than Nathan's. His posts are longer than Nathan's and just has a lot more for the reader to chew on than Nathan's. He also doesn't link his threads so another few docked points there.

In his last thread, his and Franco posts are mixed into one and so you get two perspectives in one making it more difficult to make things clear as well as give a proper voice to a character, which is arguably among the most important thing to do when a character is dying. At least it fits in line with his thoughts throughout his threads, Nathan tries to betray Franco for his gun, but messes up and ends up dying for it. But at the same time, it's done away in the first post, after which he's forgotten so Franco can have his confrontation with Damien.

For a character with a profile that hints at much action to follow along with a more exciting story. Nathan didn't do much, if anything. He is immediately accosted by Franco and Russ who are both being given a lot more to work with than Nathan who just ends up following Franco around till he's unceremoniously killed in Nealosi's post in his third thread. He gets overshadowed so badly by him that I might as well have made this a Franco writeup cause Nathan's entire story revolved around the guy.

Can't really recommend him.

Alright let's knock this out with Harry Constantine!

Harry hunches over like a bird, has ADHD, his mother died of AIDS from a contaminated needle, wants to be a Buddhist Monk, and is a master of Northern Long Arm Kung Fu and Choy Li Fat Drunken Boxing. He's also on the swim team, a social mid-ranker, and enjoys Magic the Gathering. That's all fine for v2, so moving on!

No pre-game. On-island, he wakes up, decides he'll never kill, kills a mosquito offhandedly which makes me chuckle a bit, and curses Danya and the sky before walking off.

He arrives into a fight, of course. Or the aftermath of one. Bryan Calvert's the only one left. Harry wonders why the hell everyone's fighting each other while the terrorists are the real villains.

Harry, as Rugga has said plenty of times in chat.... you're going to find out very quickly that you're in the wrong version, my friend.

So Harry tells Bryan to drop his shotty, that doesn't work and he takes cover behind a dumpster while trying to sell Bryan on the benefits of teaming up to escape. Bryan ain't hearing it. They have a standoff while keeping cover and I like how Harry is believably nervous and freaked out while trying to put up a brave front and also getting pissy that Bryan's not listening to reason. Bryan ends up taking off.

o be entirely honest, Harry was a little angry that the whole episode. Maybe if he'd handled it better, Harry and Mr. Sunshine would have been allies. Then again, Mr Sunshine seemed to be a tad on the psychotic side.

You're not bad, Harry.

He comes across Caitlin Evans poking a corpse and is suitably disgusted at what's going on and the whole damn situation. So he leaves, and that was definitely a pointless thread but we get to have Harry at least use this brief situation to reconfirm his desire to actually band together a group of non-players and try to escape.

Caitlin proceeds to spontaneously combust. Sigh.

Harry moves along and predates The Belko Experiment by a decade by wondering why Danya didn't pick an office building. Endless_Helix outta sue. He sees Mary-Anne Robinson by the river, greets her poorly, and she freaks out with a lot of overwritten reactions, but all she actually says is "You gonna shoot me huh?" and Harry goes into an out-of-nowhere rant about her and everything before pointing his gun at her. That... I like Harry and understand he's stressed but that doesn't work for me. She charges at him, he is distracted by her cleavage (DAMNIT V2) but manages to shoot her in the stomach. And... OK despite that there is a long loooooong drawn-out fight scene that I'm not going to fully transcribe except to note the following:
- Harry accidentally grabs her boob (DAMNIT AGAIN V2)
- In all the teeming multitudes of songposts from v1-v4 I've come across, Harry's Offspring songpost in the middle of the fight might be the most pointless one yet
- Harry does note how much this sucks and how the game's gotten to him and he's not really better than anyone else, and that's still good.

Finally Harry shoots her, buries her, and angsts a lot about what he's done. So a brief note about this... Harry and his actual conscience is absolutely a breath of fresh air, but him getting this kill doesn't go down right. Maybe it's just too soon for his character. More likely it's that he instigated the whole fucking thing with his ranting and screaming and threatening first, which made no sense for him to be doing in the first place. It read as an artificial way for him to score a kill and get some character development in, but it's over and done with now and we'll see where Harry goes from here.

He walks through the forest, sad about his kill and contemplating what it might be like to head to the cliffs and end it all, where a girl named Lani is throwing a knife at a tree. They converse and she is way artificially articulate for my liking, and Harry is tired from not having slept. Hey, realism! After some chit-chat Lani goes inactive for a bit so we rush to the announcement and Harry takes off. Lani's handler comes back just in time... to have her collar detonate and kill her anyway. Sigh again. That was pointless but not too bad. Harry is sad and that's rare enough for v2 that I can't help but respect him.

To the lighthouse! Maggie Heartgreeder, Blake Ross, and oh boy Garry Dodd open up the thread. Maggie's barricaded herself inside. Blake smashes the barricade down for no real reason. Garry lurks. Harry sees Blake and thinks he's dumb. Maggie tends to Blake (why barricade in the first place if you're gonna be nice to the guy who breaks through it?) while Harry runs into Garry and his knife, who plots to maybe kill Harry and everyone but instead invites him in because he wants to keep low-key. This isn't a bad scene, really. Blake's got a dislocated shoulder from his dumb smashing and Harry enters the lighthouse both wary and concerned, which fits for his character. None of these four really trust each other and it's kind of a slow-burn thing that we haven't seen much in v2.  They pop Blake's arm back into place...

or rather Harry doesn't because he's gone inactive and disappears. Like, doesn't even have an exit post from the thread. Zilya Mercharrsiov shows up and everyone eventually leaves with no more mention of Harry.

AAAAAAAAAATRHGH

So that sucked.

Harry's picked up by Cyco and enters Bryan and Tori's scene after Bryan picks up his BKA from terrorist principal Steven Wilson. Not a good sign for Harry's long-term prospects, that. He at least stays somewhat recognizable, and I can understand him reflexively shooting at Bryan given his earlier encounter and the latent guilt he's been feeling about everything, even it's an obvious way for Harry to be the instigator in the fight that'll lead to his demise.

They both shoot at each other and take cover behind rocks in the shallow water and call out some insults. Eventually Bryan and Tori go underwater when Harry comes around their rock, only for Bryan to pop up all Schwarzenegger-style and shoot Harry dead. It's not the best and not the worst fight scene you'll read in v2 or SOTF.

So overall, yeah I do recommend Harry just for the sheer uniqueness of an actual kid who wants to be heroic and escape in v2. Not everything works, that's for damn sure. But he's competently written the whole way through and has an arc, even if his inactiveness just when I was liking a scene was deadly frustrating, and his death turned him into fodder a bit more than he deserved. But that's the breaks.

Ngl the main reason I've taken so long to do this is because I've been struggling to do a thread by thread write up that wasn't trash. So instead of doing that I'll give a quick overview of Robby boy since I feel he at least deserved that since overall he's a strong read, however there are a few things that hold him back from being truly great.

One of the strongest things about Rob is his voice. Ares overall has a great sense of who the kid is and delivers on it excellently. In almost every scene he's in Robert is able to either carry it on his own or improve it greatly just by being there. It doesn't hurt that he's with another strong character in Matthew as well for the majority of his stay on the island. The two bounce off of each other greatly and while I honestly hated the duo at first their development together was extremely strong and I couldn't help but to root for the two of them to make it out even though I already knew they'd take the fall sooner or later. However that doesn't mean it was all great. Matthew at the beginning had me rolling my eyes constantly and it wasn't until Cold Cash and Colder Hearts that I actually really began to like the duo. Maybe it's my own distaste for stereotypical pothead characters mixed with the fact that it took the two awhile for them to even begin to like each other that made me not care for the two of them together, but the entire time I read Robert's story until this point I was just hoping Matthew would bite the dust or Rob would ditch him. Thankfully though the former didn't happen for a while though and the latter didn't at all, so I was able to see them actually get to the point where they were actually good.

However early game Matthew isn't the only issue Robert's plot faced. One of my biggest complaints is how often Ares would have his other characters just walk into scenes involving Rob just so they can die around him because idk reasons. Like for example in the aforementioned Cold Cash and Colder Hearts Rob gets high and wanders off and one of Ares' other kids, Steve, wanders in so Matthew can slit his throat. Thread before this one Kyle gets murdered right in front of Rob and the way the scene plays out and what follows makes it feel like Robert could of been removed from the entire scene and nothing would of changes, and when they return to said thread after Cold Cash and Colder Hearts Rob just ends up killing Sarah Dao as soon as Ares gains control of her. The same issues arises with Matthew and Baby_G's other characters as well, where they feel like they only exist to die around the duo. In fact out of all of Matthew and Robert's kills only two from a different handlers. The rest are kids directly controlled by the two of them. The entire time I read through their story I couldn't help but wish that I'd see any other username besides just Baby_G and Ares. Thankfully later on (When they begin to run out of characters) this issue goes away, but it's still not something I was fond of.

Thankfully though aside from some uh... Very 2000s dialogue choices (Seriously who even speaks like this?) and a lot of underreactions to running into death Robert's story is one I can recommend wholeheartedly. There's a lot of great stuff to him, and it's obvious Ares put a lot of effort into making Rob work in the end. It's actually a little shocking to me that despite making it to 9th freaking place Rob doesn't have a single write up in his wiki page's "Your thoughts" section which I don't really think is fair. He's a good read, and if you're at all curious I would 100% recommend him.

Here’s a doc I made containing my live thoughts as I went through Stephanie. Feel free to see my total confusion first hand.

So… Stephanie isn’t really a good character. At all. Although it looks from her initial one-shot that she’s going to be some decent (if… one note, there wasn’t really a lot of depth as to how she was being portrayed) manipulator type, subsequent threads essentially throw that and any sense of consistency out the window as she keeps suddenly changing between “person who wants to manipulate the competition so she can win,” “insane psycho who randomly rushes at and attacks people,” and “deeply remorseful person who just wants to die” with no real reason as to when and why these switches happen, sometimes changing and then declaring that those changes are a lie as a way of manipulating herself multiple times within the same post. I could buy and even possibly like this idea if there was an explanation as to why Stephanie keeps doing this, but the reader never really does get an answer for why Stephanie acts this way, and her death scene - particularly the reasons as to why she suddenly kills herself - just ended up leaving me totally confused as to why Stephanie did that, and as to why overall Stephanie seemingly had no consistency to her character.

It looks like I’m out of the read-a-thon with this one, although if anyone thinks that they’re not going to read their kid then they can give them to me. I’m fine with adding more onto my plate.

Yugikun, the Ultimate Ho - Today at 7:26 PM
...
"Problems began to occur when Matt was looking for more of a physical aspect in the relationship. Deliah was terrified of losing any affection she felt she worked so hard for, and so she gave her virginity to her sweet boyfriend.

It's currently been three months, and Deliah spends a lot of her time crying now. She still hasn't told Matt that she's carrying his child."
ohhhhhhh boy
"Age: 14" OHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH BOY

the end begins

[+] My Recappy Deliah Review. Trigger Warning - Miscarriage

What's planned for her, however, may shake up the school and possibly add a crazy twist for V2.

This is a sentence that's stated in Deliah's first… thread? It's less a thread more a bunch of random information Chase gives that repeats stuff that should have been in the profile and looks a bit like a TV advertisement for Deliah but oh well, I guess given V2 there's some justification as to why it's there. The main thing that caught me here was the bit that I just quoted above, where its stated that the stuff planned for her “may shake up the school and possibly add a crazy twist for V2.”

Hmm, I wonder what sort of “crazy twist” could come from a 14 year old who is explicitly stated to be secretly pregnant?



I dunno. I guess she’s gonna be the next big hero? Doesn’t matter. Carrying on.

So the thread that Deliah first appears in can… probably just be skipped because it doesn’t really have any impact towards her story whatsoever. Two Mitsuko characters are having a standoff, she appears and goes through some Day 1 motions and then THE GOSSIP KING comes in and decides what he’s going to do on this island from here on out.

The boy did have feelings for the populars, the people who've stood by him. They didn't deserve a death as gory as what he did to Brittany. They didn't deserve a to be bruttaly killed like the losers and nerds out there. Paris thought about this while nervously looking around waiting for something to happen as he would take refuge at a park.

Paris made up his mind, the next time he encounters someone that is popular he will give them a honorable death. He wasn't quite sure what an honorable death consited of or how it was accomplished. Maybe he should have payed more attention in history class. But definatly he would respect the fact a persons popular by the way he killed them. Sure it was sad, but he had to in order to survive. He had no other choice. That philosophy kept repeating inside his head over and over.

If he had the chance to kill this boy he would die the unpopular way. He obviously wasn't popular and dosn't deserve a clean or honorable death.

Truly, Paris Persephone is a well-developed character with multiple dimensions behind him.

But we’re not talking about him, we’re talking about Deliah, and she… doesn’t do much. Once things start happening she just backs off and leaves the thread. Admittedly, the writing’s good - this would pass in V4-V6 no problem, although for someone who’s going to add a crazy twist to V2 she hasn’t done all that much so far. Like, there’s nothing for me to really poke fun about - because seriously, the writing is actually quite good for typical V2 standards - but there’s not a lot for me to reccommend her on at this point since there’s… no real plot attachment and progression. That’s probably gonna change though, she’s entering another thread and-

”her second thread’s title” wrote:Rain on Me; Tradgedy with the Twins

Oh, a tradgedy? That sounds interesting. Maybe now we can finally figure out what CRAZY TWIST Deliah is supposed to add to V2, and how this is going to SHAKE UP THE SCHOOL. im so excited u gaiz

So the thread starts out with the Dollop twins (the first twins to EVER be written by different people, despite the fact that it happened in V1 but for whatever reason that doesn’t count?) having their reunion. It’s… nothing special, a bunch of things I’ve already seen before in SotF, but this thread advertised  tradgedy, I’m sure that something’s gonna happen her-

Trying to hold on to Debrah became too strained, and she let her arms wrap around her stomach as she fell onto her side in the mud.

"Oh god," she cried, feeling sick and exasperated while her breathing stayed shallow and her body kept shaking.

"Debrah, it hurts, oh god it hurts!"

Deliah felt her body start to move against her, as she willed herself to calm down she felt something between her legs, like excrement of some sort squeezing itself from the wrong hole. What had just happened? Had she had a seizure?

She couldn't feel anything but pain and the substance between her legs sliding down and falling onto the mud in the rain. Even though she couldn't manage it, she felt a certain shame for not being able to keep herself together like her sister seemed to have.

"What's happening?" she cried, afraid to look down at herself, still lying in the mud with the rain pouring upon her.

…

…

Oh.

So, uh, this is what the crazy twist is, huh.

…

…

Her legs wide open as she found herself on her back, she tried to lift her body to see what had come out, worst fears surfacing upon seeing a bloody –well, she couldn’t describe it as human yet—thing connected to her by a veiny cord.

It lay still, in the mud, being pummeled by rain and Deliah could only stare at it in disgust. Her mouth opened wide and she let out a gasp of horror once she was able to finally put two and two together. In front of her was her baby. Not moving, pale and skin almost paper thin, connected to her body, no longer alive.

“No,” she choked on her words, “No….”

The King of Gossip - Today at 8:03 PM
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is it gone yet

Yugikun, the Ultimate Ho - Today at 8:03 PM
IF I HAVE TO READ THIS

The Ohm - Today at 8:03 PM
Still see it

The King of Gossip - Today at 8:03 PM
yugi i JUST read it

Yugikun, the Ultimate Ho - Today at 8:03 PM
YOU HAVE TO READ THIS TOO

The King of Gossip - Today at 8:03 PM
i am

Brackie - Today at 8:03 PM
oh dear

The King of Gossip - Today at 8:03 PM
not inflicting it
on anyone else

Brackie - Today at 8:03 PM
I'm going to uh

Aura? - Today at 8:03 PM
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

Brackie - Today at 8:03 PM
hope and pray that
nothing else happens to it

Aura? - Today at 8:03 PM
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
WHYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY
I ALREADY HAD TO READ THIS ONCE

So…

This is… definately a thing that happens, but the writing is actually still good! Like, take this particular section:

She kept telling herself that it was her own fault, that she couldn’t protect him—she always wanted a boy to name Jeffrey, and though she didn’t know what the baby would’ve been, she thought it safe to call it what she wanted regardless—and she began to sob harder as she brought her knees up to surround the fetus in her arms.

Like, yeah, it’s not the best writing I’ve ever seen but there’s good stuff here and in other places! It sorta reveals a bit about the character (what she would have named the baby) and shows what Deliah’s emotional state is at the current moment (denial, showed by her stating of how she’d call the child what she wanted to call it). Chase is a pretty competent/good writer, and although this scene is definitely supposed to be for shock value and adding a CRAZY TWIST to V2 I’m sure that now that this is done Deliah can continue showing that general quality, right?

Right??

Debrah couldn’t believe the sight before her. Deliah holding her unborn child close to her, whispering sweet nothings into it’s under developed ear. Something in Debrah’s mind broke at that moment.

YOU PROMISED, YOU PROMISED, YOU PROMISED!

Debrah! Calm down!

BITCH! WHORE! SLUT! YOU NEVER LOVED ME!

The makeup which once made her so beautiful ran down her face, she was no less of a heartless monster than any other person on this earth.

(yeah deliah, how fucking dare you think about the miscarriage you just had over me, you fucking bitch)

Bent over, hovering, trying to protect the dead mess in her arms from the pummeling water, Deliah whispered once more to it.

"I'm sorry."

The axe didn't cut all the way through her head. There was a flap of her skin in the front that let her head swing downward. It slammed into the fetus, bleeding profusely from the back, mixing with rainwater onto her shirt.

Deliah's unborn child was dropped onto the ground from her lifeless hands, blood pouring into the mud as she collapsed forward, smashing the fetus into the soft mud.

GIRL #52, DELIAH DOLLOP - DEAD

Oh.

Well.

Now that its done it’s… pretty clear that Deliah’s story exists only for the shock value of the miscarriage and to add a CRAZY TWIST that would SHAKE UP THE SCHOOL. She does nothing of note in her first thread and the entirety of her second/death thread focuses around her miscarriage and the way both sisters react to it, which… honestly sorta sucks and reeks of wasted potential. Deliah wasn’t really the best character by any means but the writing to her was still pretty good - as I said, could very easily be seen in the latter three main versions - so the fact that that potential for something good was squandered just so that Chase could add a CRAZY TWIST just sorta really irks me as a writer, and given the… honestly sorta disgusting content of the thread and the fact that nothing else happens other than that the good writing is sorta overshadowed, and I honestly can’t really recommend her. Better than three of the five people I’ve read, but that doesn’t mean good or worthy of reading in her own right.

So… that’s it. I’m out of the read-a-thon now. Of course I’m absolutely free to take anyone else's characters if you don’t want to take them anymore but for now, I’m free! Final rankings for the V2 characters I read are:

Laura Diesen (C Tier - Characters I like, but have major flaws marring their story) > Deliah Dollop (D+ Tier - Characters who could have been good, but who I feel squandered or didn’t live up to their potential) > Jaime Dibenidetti (D- Tier - The Apathy Zone) > Walter Smith (E Tier - Characters I Dislike) > Stephanie Crew (E Tier)

But other than that…